Roleplaying is like sex, y'know? And I'm a hanging out getting to know each other, not on the first date kind of guy. So, yes, a gaming con, but I'm like, roleplay with you? I barely even know you.

Worst: Baron Munchausen. Michael Miller has, apparently, gotten to play Baron Munchausen at every con he's been to for a long, long time. So he pulls it suggestively out of his bag and I'm like, I dread that game with a dread borne of full and accurate self-knowledge. But do I say that? Nope, instead I say, "can people actually play that game?" Stupid.

It turns out that, yes, they can, and do, and sometimes they expect you to play it with them. And what are you going to say, thanks but I'd rather watch?

Fortunately, my fellows at the table were very gracious about my (note to self: don't say "dysfunction") dysfunction (dammit, self) and we moved from Joshua's Commadore's entertaining story about how he learned the tongue-language of the giraffes from that people's queen (under the very nose of that people's king) almost hitchlessly right on to Tony's Viscount's entertaining story about how he had polar bears sent by parcel post to the south pole so he could use the splinters of the true cross to build a bridge across the Hellespont. God save the kings and queens of everyone we like, bugger the rest.

Better: Dogs in the Vineyard. I'd get all twitchy about having to run it in a couple hours or whatever, like, oh lord, we're going to sit down at the table and I'm the guy who has to say the first word, and it has to be just right for my game which I love so much and would so hate to let down...

But then I'd remember character creation and breathe a big sigh of relief. Oh yeah, I'd go, we'll make characters first, so by the time I have to say anything but explain the rules, they and I will be all ready and rarin'.

We made some scary good characters. A first town dealt with is just a first town dealt with, but some of those characters had legs. Maybe some of the characters' makers will tell about them, if they feel like it.

The sadness of con games is that you never get a second date.

Anyway better still: the Mountain Witch. That game ... that game's a sweetie. We played with the full complement of six players plus Tim. It was great for me - there were other people doin' hot things in the early game, so I could play my character reserved and easy. I can't possibly tell the whole story of it, but I killed the Mountain Witch:

It came to be that my ronin swore loyalty to Judd's, becoming Judd's character's samurai. Later, when we finally won to the Mountain Witch, Judd's character's lord and father - now, my lord's lord - was at tea with the Mountain Witch himself.

The Mountain Witch points at me. "You're unlike the rest," he says. "You don't hate me."

It's true. "I hate whom my lord hates," I say.

"I hate you very much," Judd says.

"Oh come now," my lord's lord, Judd's character's father, says, "you know we've been long allies. Again, you disappoint me."

Judd (he's putting his affairs in order, there's only one thing he can do to his father now, in a little while he'll do it and I'll be his second) but for now he turns to me. "I am not worthy to be your lord. I release you from service. Go be a monk," he says.

Viscerally: I do hate the Mountain Witch, all at once, for the shame he's inflicted on my lord.

Viscerally: No longer bound to serve my lord, I'm suddenly free to do his will.

Fuckin' yeah.

On the train home, we're talking about all the games, and Joshua's telling me how the Discernment game he played makes him want to play a game all about leige and loyalty. I get this satisfied, drowsy look on my face. I've said all I have to say about leige and loyalty. I am leige-and-loyalty fulfilled.

-Vincent

Seppeku never felt so good.

That Mountain Witch game was fantastic.

High points:

The gaijin from Portugal and Clinton's samurai in a midnight duel over a woman:

"I sheathed my blade in her blood!"

Rob's easy betrayal of us all:

"At first I was not sure who to hand to the Mountain Witch, as only the gaijin was despicable but I have since reconsidered, they are all animals."

I adore how when a character dies he can still allocate trust and thus keep the player in the game. That absolutely rocks. Their spirit is still with us.

The samurai with the frost-bitten feet, love-sick for his dead lord, crawling through the Mountain Witch's keep.

Vince's silent, honorable samurai who my PC didn't trust because he showed no sign of dis-honor. I put my trust to 0 because he was just too sqeaky clean and my character could not conceive of anyone being a ronin and being that pure.

Turns out he was.

Somewhere around here I have the haiku I wrote during the game, 3 in all. Fun stuff. Last month I taught the kids in the after-school program where I worked to write haiku and so it was fresh on my mind.

Great game, a fantastic one-shot in a bottle and I don't think samurai going up Fujii is all it can do either. I think this game could do hiest movies and possibly even a trip through Moria of some sort.

Fun stuff.

I finally got to play Dogs in the Vineyard, and it was fantastic! (No surprise to anyone here, of course.) Just as everyone at the Forge table told me, the system really comes alive when you move from reading about it in the book to actually rolling the dice. Of course, some of the magic may have come from Vince's GMing skills, so I'll have to try it again with another GM to know for sure.

During the game, the characters came alive quickly and easily during trait assignment and the initiatory conflicts. I really enjoyed playing Brother Charity, what with his being afeared of Brother Moses and all; the intra-group conflict would have been interesting had the game continued into further sessions. Likewise, I would have enjoyed the opportunity to explore other aspects of the character. I thought it interesting that his strongest Traits (Horses Trust Me and I Know Every Star) never came into play, yet I somehow managed to shoehorn the I Can Cook Anything trait into two different scenes.

Unfortunately, I'm currently in the "This finely-tuned indie game is so cool, I can use it for anything!" phase. Hopefully I won't break Dogs too badly as I try and convert it for use in an Amber setting.

I also got to meet a bunch of other great people from the Forge (Clinton, Tony LB, Michael M, Keith S, and probably some others I've forgotten -- I blame the drugs). Everyone was funny, friendly and insightful. Thanks to everyone who was there for making a good convention much, much better!

- Eric

Wow, Judd, I forgot your haiku for some reason. That was great.

And Vince, man, I simultaneously loved and hated your character (in character). I couldn't get a handle on him!

Paka, I meant it very seriously when I said how excellent you are as a roleplayer. I've never seen anyone so easily falling into character and conducting the story. I found myself wanting to be in games just because I saw you there.

Mountain Witch was a monster, and, as Tim no doubt foresaw, it was not the eponymous Witch that made it so. That the primary mechanic is Trust reflects the genre so accurately that we almost didn't have to work to make the game function; strategizing about effective play is the same as good role-playing. I think that any serious modification of the game has to very carefully take the story into account. Tim, correct me please if I'm wrong, but I think a Mountain Witch game has to include:

- Strangers brough together by mutual desire for payment (it can be glory, or experience, or whatever, too - the money is very abstract, so it can be an abstract desire, I think)

- They must be pressed by circumstance to require each others' assistance; solitary struggles probably require help and big, communal ones demand it.

- The characters' technical excellence must be guaranteed. One of the things about Samurai movies is that they show the difference in soul between an excellent swordsman and a master.

- The Buddhist cosmology works really well and it might be hard to change. Tim, I'm not sure how much you realize the Buddhist underpinnings of the Ronin genre, but it follows it so well

By the time we played, I'd already played through My Life with Master. I'd been ambivalent about it before: "If the ending's always the same, how is the story going to be any different?" I didn't see until play started that the story revolved around the characters' need to kill Master, not his eventual death. That where the Good Stuff lay was in the character interactions, just like in any genre piece.

Consider Mike Mearls' classic reasons why MLWM isn't an RPG: you know the end state. Of course, you know the end state of a dungeon crawl, too. You know the end state of a Steal The World-Smasher spy story (can you imagine James Bond if the world's devolved into a post-apocalyptic Road Warrior thing?). You know the end of a Samurai story (if it's done as well as MW). The important thing is what happens to the characters in the process, not the ending.

I can't think of a single reason not to put that game of My Life with Master in the upper echelons of Great Role-Playing Games I've Played. Damn, the characters were good. I loved seeing Rob'sTor Johnson slapping himself on the head and saying "Nice words confuse MAWG!". I loved Judd's character with the huge, tearing eyes yelling at Master that it was selfish for the character to hate Master, and that, rather than hate Master, he wanted to become Master. Andrew's inimicable butler who cannot be seen unless called by name agreeing "Yes, Master" to consistently contradictory orders, and then walking over the hill to his next master as this one dies. Tony's toad-man, sticking to walls and popping free, somewhere in the castle, every time there was a loud noise. It was such a vibrant cast, held together by the Master whose face we never quite saw, the huge fresnel lens magnifying his eating, or a respirator and goggles obscuring him. It made me have no regrets whatsoever when Luissa was torn to shreds by the mob of her own design rather than destroying Master myself.

Again, playing the game strategically is the same as role-playing well; the rules support your character completely. The repurcussions of doing Master's bidding are an increase in Self-Loathing; the repercussions of failure are minimal. And the ways you find to inflict your love on others in order to make your character feel better (and therefore more effective), all makes precisely the story you want to tell.

I'd never played Baron Munchausen before, but boy, I want to play again. There are some interesting techniques we discerned, and I'll say them here: whoever goes last benefits from the Caesar Effect. In order to reduce this, other players should stay in character, associating their position at the table with their stories, so that when the coins fall from other characters at the end, you've been surreptitiously building on your story while the last person had to wait hir turn. Excellently, that means that the best way to play is to be absolutely serious about the matter of character integrity. Oh, and it should be played at a pub. Play with Scajawea coins and the winner buys drinks with the proceeds.

Discernment was a neat game, and I really liked the stories we came up with to challenge the Subject, but there are some quirks with the bidding process, in particular that the Subject lacks motivation to bid at all. If sHe had a reason to spend resources, bluffing might be an option, but it would not automatically be the best one. As long as the Subject has bought into the bidding process, though, the game's really neat. I'd like to see it fleshed out and I thank Mike for introducing me to some intruiguing design concepts. If'n ya don't mind, I'll steal some o' them.

I like the co-GM aspect of TSoY, whereby all players grant bonus dice to each other in a pivotal conflict and players have a direct way to judge if they're following experience-worthy behaviors. It's a game that's well worth learning, and Clinton's a ball to play with. I only regret not playing Dogs with him.

And speaking of Dogs: Eric, you can change genre, world setting, magic powers, weapons, or whatever at will, but you absolutely must follow the formula of the game for creating towns. Play it straight a couple of times and you'll understand why. As long as your Amber characters are dealing with a society breaking down due to the interactions of the individuals therein, it should be cool.

Conspiracy of Shadows was a ball and I loved the characters. The surly owner of the caravanserai, the Priest who had lost his faith so completely he'd rather claw his way through the snow with his fingernails than pray, and the farmer thirsting for class justice. The point that made the game for me was the decision - Tim's, if I recall - that one of us had committed the assassination in question, and all of us racing to figure out if our own characters were the best culprit. It's like Clue, only fun.

I played more games, but it's getting late and I want to post to my LiveJournal about the experience.

Most of all, I'd like to thank you all for being excellent comrades in a sea of bad fashion choices and bad-smelling hair. And I'd like to thank you for ennabling me in the tragic character bender I seem to be on. Thank you for designing systems and playing with me while I am hated by God, drink myself to death and enlightenment over the death of my lover, betray the very man I support in a grab for power, and be torn to pieces by a mob driven mad by my beauty.

RobNJ wrote: And Vince, man, I simultaneously loved and hated your character (in character). I couldn't get a handle on him!

nikola wrote:

I kept finding myself basing my trust of Vincent's character on extenuating circumstances...

This brings up a question. How familiar is everyone else with the genre? I pretty much swam in, drank, and breathed Kurosawa for a while, particularly while studying film.

If we're not all intimate with it, that says volumes about the quality of Tim's rules. If we are, it just says that the rules serve the story well when played by those who know the story. But I want to know which it is.

nikola wrote: This brings up a question. How familiar is everyone else with the genre? I pretty much swam in, drank, and breathed Kurosawa for a while, particularly while studying film.

I thought the Last Samurai was irritating, that's probably worth some cred. On the other hand I fell asleep once during Ran.

Seriously, no clue. I could count the samurai movies I've seen on one hand and I've never read a book.

I'm a big Beat Takeshi fan, though, come to think of it. I won't have learned about samurai from his flicks, but I will have learned about loyalty, tragedy, and bonding through sudden violence.

-Vincent

nikola wrote: This brings up a question. How familiar is everyone else with the genre? I pretty much swam in, drank, and breathed Kurosawa for a while, particularly while studying film.

If we're not all intimate with it, that says volumes about the quality of Tim's rules. If we are, it just says that the rules serve the story well when played by those who know the story. But I want to know which it is.

RobNJ wrote: I definitely got the feeling you knew what you were talkinga bout. In fact I meant to mention that. You didn't come off pompous or tiresome like a lot of so-called Japanese culture experts in the gaming world. You weren't desperate to impress upon us how much you knew.

You were folding it into the game and giving us stuff to work with.

On a 10 point scale, where 10 is a white guy who's lived in Japan since he learned how to talk and 1 is Toby Keith...

I'd rate myself a 6 or so? I feel like I know more than the average American about samurai, but don't trust most of what I "know".

nikola wrote: If you've seen Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, and have read any large part of Lone Wolf and Cub or Vagabond, you pretty much know what I do in terms of idiom. You pretty much know what anyone does. Those are all damn fine art and everything else that's good is a direct descendant of those.

See? There's the snot.

RobNJ wrote: I've read a few pages of Lone Wolf and Cub, and know a lot about Seven Samurai despite never having seen it.

Bob Goat wrote: I've only seen the bigs really (7 Samurai, Yojimbo and a few others). In fact, it is funny, but I am more familiar with the Portuegese interactions with Japan than the Samurai culture as a whole. However, I am really familiar with westerns and noir films so it isn't much of a leap (and I want to play in a Maltese Falcon Mountain Witch game).

Well, I missed my chance to play Dogs, but heard enough good things about it to pick up a copy and now I'm trying to wrangle my players into giving it a try ASAP.

Not that I made poor decisions at the con. I got to enjoy Clinton's Shadow of Yesterday scenario which rocked along like a truck with its brakes out. Seriously, I was at first amazed that he was trusting all sides of the conflict to the players, but then as alliances of situation and brutal rivalries came toghether and fell apart I couldn't have imagined playing any other way. My Ratkin heavy got to beat and be beaten by two warriors who were ready to turn on each other at a moment's notice. Fun stuff!

Conspiracy of Shadows provided the kinds of horror headgames I was expecting, and I got to be the curmudgeonly bastard inn keeper, so I got lots of legwork running around from player to player, giving them drinks and getting caught up in their madness.

Lacuna. I later described it as the game in which players get to ask deep questions about the nature of being and the depths of the human psyche while the GM just sees how badly he can mess us up. Jared warned that we might not like him after the game, I'm only angry that there wasn't more time to play.

I'd been drifting away from Role-Playing as a hobby over the past years. Still running my Orpheus game, but giving it little thought outside of that. This convention and the very intelligent, friendly, REAL company that was mostly supplied by the indie developers and their faithful players has done a lot to make me want to get back in the game. See, I'm posting on an RPG message board. Ya wouldn't have seen that before I tell ya.

Thanks.

Hi everyone, didn't mean to ignore this thread, just its taken me a bit to get re-settled.

Baron Munchausen: I like the idea of the game, but unfortunately I suck at it. Like Vincent, I had alot more fun being the audience than when it was my turn. I would try it again, though, but preferably with alcohol next time.

Dogs: Dogs definitely deserves its reputation. Thinking back to the game I played (with Josh, Tony, Andrew M., and obviously Vincent), I'm struck by how I actually enjoyed the mechanics. The game definitely went places it probably wouldn't have gone if it wasn't for the escalation feature. I had a ton of fun, and now that I own the book, I look forward to playing it some more.

(As a quick aside, I could tell that I've been focusing on The Mountain Witch lately. All weekend I was pushing inter-PC conflict like in MW.)

Mountain Witch: Y'all are making me blush. It really was a great game. I think every single scene at at least one really cool moment about it. I unfortunately don't have much time now, but I'll write more about it later when I do.

nikola wrote: Yeah, it helps a lot that Westerns and Samurai movies cross-polinated so much. I don't really follow the Noir aspect, though. Tell me about that?

nikola wrote: Yeah, it helps a lot that Westerns and Samurai movies cross-polinated so much. I don't really follow the Noir aspect, though. Tell me about that?

Last week was incredibly busy and chock full o' game stuff.

From Monday to Friday I was knee-deep in a class at MIT (Jared at MIT, who would have thunk it?) re: "Storytelling in the Digital Age" -- basically a class about video/computer gaming, narrative frameworks and the business of gaming. Pretty cool stuff, a little too focused on "how do you make money" but by and large an interesting time. Part of the class was a group project where 4 teams designed and marketed a video/computer game based on a licensed/established media property.

DO I EVEN HAVE TO TELL YOU THAT MY TEAM WON? Hahah.

Anyway, that ate up all my waking hours (class from 10-7, commuting and working on the project at home) so it was a relief to know that I didn't have to leave for NJ until Saturday morning.

OH MAN.

Turns out that (~8:30pm Friday night) I re-read the schedule and am surprised to see that my game design seminar is SATURDAY morning, not SUNDAY morning. So the Bride and I jump in the car and head out for the Garden State*. We get to the hotel about 2-ish am and she drops me off to stay with her relatives a few towns over.

DO I EVEN HAVE TO MENTION THAT NOBODY SHOWED UP AT THE SEMINAR?

Still, I had some fun. I ran a game (shocking!) and got to meet people from Here. Which is to say, not freaks...in the bad way. Good thing about the Forge is that it seems to filter out the uh, you know. Yeah. Bad freaks.

Except Judd. Judd slipped through!

So yeah, ran Lacuna Part I. which was fun but kinda tiring. I think it was a good intro but what the hell do I know...I was drunk. Sold a few books, hung out with friends, improved my pool game and I even got to play With Great Power... which was...okay. Not super (hah!) but it was fun (and frankly, could become super with a few minor changes).

So there! *ppfffttt*


* This one was dissapointed that Zach Braff and Natalie Portman were nowhere to be found. Peter Skarsgaard was absent as well but I find him a bit creepy...

My experiences are an echo of all the above...

MAGNIFIED ONE HUNDRED TIMES.

Seriously, it was a blast. I had the most fun running TSOY, but I'm biased. It was the first time I ran it for a very large group, and I was pleasantly surprised that it runs quick and well with six people. I normally hate groups over four, and am even uncomfortable at that number. Six people made for a rockin' good time.

I wish I could remember who played Musa the slave. He nailed the big bad NPC with a spear about fifteen minutes in, leaving me reeling for what to do next. Keith walked by (who has played the scenario) and I'm all "They killed Squall! Like fifteen minutes in! What do I do?" No help he was. It all turned out well, and forty-nine gift dice at the table meant we all had a blast. We even got to see the cross-cultural pollenization which is one of TSOY's big premises: a renegade human sun-priest blessed Night-Paws, female Ratkin chieftain and pillar of all that is Night and Moon. That was totally my favorite scene, and Judd should be proud of it.

The Mountain Witch was a great time. It's a testament to the game that I was so sleepy I had to kill off my character and I still had a blast. I got in a duel with the Portugese gaijin and it was tense as hell. He slept with my wife and I killed his child: it was destined we would destroy each other.

Lacuna was weird. Jared was weird.

Lastly, Conspiracy of Shadows is badass. I've already got the idea to run a modern-day Sin City version of it. It strikes me as the Frank Miller story RPG, which fits considering Keith's art.

Meeting everyone was a blast, and I can't wait to do it again.

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: I wish I could remember who played Musa the slave. He nailed the big bad NPC with a spear about fifteen minutes in, leaving me reeling for what to do next. Keith walked by (who has played the scenario) and I'm all "They killed Squall! Like fifteen minutes in! What do I do?" No help he was.

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: Keith walked by (who has played the scenario) and I'm all "They killed Squall! Like fifteen minutes in! What do I do?" No help he was.

The Mountain Witch was a great time. It's a testament to the game that I was so sleepy I had to kill off my character and I still had a blast. I got in a duel with the Portugese gaijin and it was tense as hell. He slept with my wife and I killed his child: it was destined we would destroy each other.

Lastly, Conspiracy of Shadows is badass. I've already got the idea to run a modern-day Sin City version of it. It strikes me as the Frank Miller story RPG, which fits considering Keith's art.

Hi everyone,

Before this dicussion falls away, I thought it would be intersting to quickly bring up how our short tMW game was different from a longer game. The game we played was 5.5 hours, including explanation and chargen, 4 chapters and... err, 6-7 scenes depending upon how you want to count.

In our game, Fates were largely revealed and resolved both in the same scene. If we had had the time, I would have used those Fates to cause tension in the PC's relationships, and to cause internal conflict for the characters.

For example, I probably would have used the fact that Josh's character had "failed" to protect his lover/master to seed doubt in the other character ("If he can't even protect those he loves, how will treat you all, whom he just met?!"). I probably would have used Judd's character's father to try to get him to join the Witch. Stuff like that.

I probably would have run at least one more chapter before you guys met the Witch. But that's OK. It was an incredible game, that just seemed to work out perfectly. I'm really glad I got the chance to play with everyone.

timfire wrote: The game we played was 5.5 hours, including explanation and chargen, 4 chapters and... err, 6-7 scenes depending upon how you want to count.

In our game, Fates were largely revealed and resolved both in the same scene.

If we had had the time, I would have used those Fates to cause tension in the PC's relationships, and to cause internal conflict for the characters.

For example, I probably would have used the fact that Josh's character had "failed" to protect his lover/master to seed doubt in the other character ("If he can't even protect those he loves, how will treat you all, whom he just met?!"). I probably would have used Judd's character's father to try to get him to join the Witch. Stuff like that.

nikola wrote: ... and if so, what other elements are tweakable? I think the possibility of death (and definite resoltution of characters) has to be there, so no long-term characters, but what about other plots? This is the only system I can really see for running, say, Seven Samurai.

nikola wrote: Does this imply that most games are multi-session?

That's something that was unclear to me: how, when, and why, do you reveal your Fate?

what other elements are tweakable?... I really want to know what your feelings are about abstracting the game to other plots and genres. What are the requirements a story must fulfill in order to work with tMW rules?

timfire wrote: I think you can only bounce on the fence for so long before taking a stand:

1. I trust them.
2. I don't trust him.
3. I'm not going to deal with it until I absolutely have to (ie, when we confront the Witch).

TonyLB wrote: But doesn't Vincent's lesson on follow-up from DitV apply here? Once they've made the decision, that's the time to start pressing them... "You trust him... even now? Even in this situation? Even when he says this?" Or are those follow-ups going to be less charged than the original decision? They might... I'm not sure.

timfire wrote: Something to consider is that characters in tMW (and in all RPG's) are only 1 or 2 dimension.

. . .

[Hmm, is this topic worth breaking off into a Theory thread?]

Hi guys,

But doesn't Vincent's lesson on follow-up from DitV apply here? Once they've made the decision, that's the time to start pressing them... "You trust him... even now? Even in this situation? Even when he says this?" Or are those follow-ups going to be less charged than the original decision? They might... I'm not sure.

RobNJ wrote:

timfire wrote: Something to consider is that characters in tMW (and in all RPG's) are only 1 or 2 dimension.

Perhaps so, because I would disagree with this. Given more time, I feel like I could've given my PC a few more dimensions

Bankuei wrote: While I could also fathom a long term campaign where the goal was to kill the "big-bad" at the end, because the focus is on trust between player characters(and, players), I'd have to agree with Tony that at a certain point folks will have decided where they stand, because it's just one issue being pushed back and forth as the focus.

If you add too much to that, then you lose the focus and it shifts instead to player characters interactions with non-player characters as the focus.

Okay, in the context of tMW, I see what you mean. I thought you were referring to RPGs in general.

Likewise. To really get a different (as opposed to escalated) question you would need a new external situation. When everything is moving toward the Mountain Witch (and simultaneously toward the sharpest possible version of the current trust-questions) you can only go so long before you get there.

Hi Tim,

I think you meant that you agreed with me. And yeah, I think you've summed up my ideas nicely.

nikola wrote: That's something that was unclear to me: how, when, and why, do you reveal your Fate?

timfire wrote: When did you decide that your character's Worst Fear was the guilt over letting his master/lover die? Before the dream sequence?

When did you decide that the way to deal with that fear was to march straight to the Witch?

Once you figured out that the suicidal march was the thing to do, did you still have trouble knowing what to do with your Fate?

I admit I probably could have been clearer about foreshadowing and revealing Fates, but I wonder if your confusion wasn't so much with how they worked, but was because you didn't know what you wanted to do with your Fate?

The Intro just lets players establish themselves. The players then use that knowledge to start building relationships (building tension). It also gives players some time to think about their Fates. It also gives players material to use with their Fates - if they want. Now, if we had had the time and I was able to test you with your Fate, my adversity might have help you find direction for how you wanted to resolve your Fate.

Are you following me? What do you think of that?

Hello,

Both times I've played the game, [The Mountain Witch] A playtest and [The Mountain Witch] Playtest comments #1, we specifically decided to give everyone the opportunity to foreshadow their fates at the end of each scene. People also loosened up a bit after the first time we did so and started to continue to foreshadow ad lib throughout the rest of play.

One of the games was only a three-hour single session, so I don't think that a con/demo situation would render this tactic less useful.

Best,
Ron

I am reminded of Michael's mechanic in With Great Power wherein you have to have a scene to show a trait before you can use it.

Maybe the 3 powers could be linked to different hints at the Dark Fate and so you have to show this hint in a scene before you can use said power.

Paka wrote: I am reminded of Michael's mechanic in With Great Power wherein you have to have a scene to show a trait before you can use it.

Maybe the 3 powers could be linked to different hints at the Dark Fate and so you have to show this hint in a scene before you can use said power.

Tim, I had a different experience. My fate, coupled with the zodiac sign, gave me everything I needed to know about my character right from the start. As soon as I saw which Fate he had, I knew, in broad, who he was and what his story would be like, and it played out pretty much like I envisioned. All I had to do was fill in the details. I never had a point where I was uncertain what direction to go in.

Tim, I feel the system works fine as it is. I believe I just said that I am reminded of Michael's system for WGP...

Thassall.

I like that we insert plot hooks for the GM to grab, that's super-cool.