Paul: you just dumped me on the forum here, so I don't know what plans you exactly have going forward. Should I, like, playtest Acts of Evil? Because I certainly can do that around maybe 12th of this month. What I need for doing that is some idea of what kind of data you need from playtest. I'll also need a compact listing of the game procedures, but I guess I can make that myself.

Text style and structure: when you get down to writing the game text, you probably should enmesh the rules mechanics into explanatory IC prose, to illustrate the reasons for the rules for the reader. In my experience this kind of game works best if the player understands the relationships between the mechanics and scores. This is doubly true when the player has a relatively free choice of conflict type, as is the case here. Difficult to make meaningful choices without spendings lots of effort on figuring out what the mechanics actually do. Revealing the nature of Ephactha at the end is a touch of genius, so keep that.

Other than that, the game certainly looks interesting. You should contact Ben Lehman, he was working on something similar a month ago. I'll save further commentary for later, when you give us some idea of what you're looking for in terms of feedback.

Hey Eero,

Should I, like, playtest Acts of Evil? Because I certainly can do that around maybe 12th of this month. What I need for doing that is some idea of what kind of data you need from playtest.

Excellent :)  Big unanswered questions for me at this point:

• Are there any dead spots in the formulas, so a player can get numerically trapped in some way that destroys the character's dramatic interest?
• What does the game feel like to play? Is it powerful and compelling? Scary? Does it make you sick to your stomach? Do players quit? Or does Advancement keep people playing despite the subject matter?
• One of the design goals is for the NPC Victims and Nobodies to actually emerge from the events of play as compelling and sympathetic protagonists. Does this happen?
• How regularly do players choose to frame their own scenes?
• Are there common strategies that accomplished players fall into?
• Can Acts of Evil be a game that people want to play, like My Life with Master, rather than one, like Nicotine Girls or The Valedictorian's Death, that people read and appreciate, but with barriers to play that most don't surmount?

I'm sure I'll have more.

Text style and structure: when you get down to writing the game text, you probably should enmesh the rules mechanics into explanatory IC prose, to illustrate the reasons for the rules for the reader.

Dang, that's so exactly right. What kept me from thinking of that? Thanks.

Revealing the nature of Ephactha at the end is a touch of genius, so keep that.

You mean revealing the nature of Ephactha in the game text? Or you mean keeping the nature of Ephactha secret from the players (the way Blue Planet and Engel keep secrets from the players) until one of them actually confronts him? Both Ron and Scott Knipe have argued powerfull to me in the past that narrativist games are better off without such secrets. And so here I'm torn.

I'll save further commentary for later, when you give us some idea of what you're looking for in terms of feedback.

I want to hear anything you think is important.

Thanks,

Paul

Paul wrote:

• Are there any dead spots in the formulas, so a player can get numerically trapped in some way that destroys the character's dramatic interest?
• What does the game feel like to play? Is it powerful and compelling? Scary? Does it make you sick to your stomach? Do players quit? Or does Advancement keep people playing despite the subject matter?
• One of the design goals is for the NPC Victims and Nobodies to actually emerge from the events of play as compelling and sympathetic protagonists. Does this happen?
• How regularly do players choose to frame their own scenes?
• Are there common strategies that accomplished players fall into?
• Can Acts of Evil be a game that people want to play, like My Life with Master, rather than one, like Nicotine Girls or The Valedictorian's Death, that people read and appreciate, but with barriers to play that most don't surmount?

Revealing the nature of Ephactha at the end is a touch of genius, so keep that.

You mean revealing the nature of Ephactha in the game text? Or you mean keeping the nature of Ephactha secret from the players (the way Blue Planet and Engel keep secrets from the players) until one of them actually confronts him? Both Ron and Scott Knipe have argued powerfull to me in the past that narrativist games are better off without such secrets. And so here I'm torn.

The way I read the rules, a cosmos-hopping Scourge can only confront Ephacta in dreamspace or other dimension in common between them (you can hardly motivate Ephacta to come to you, can you?), while a time-hopper has to travel to the distant past. If the nature of Ephacta is not known, this determination of arena of confrontation cannot be made. If a player assumes Ephacta to be outside Earth, he could even think it impossible for his time-hopper to meet it.

Aha, I mis-wrote the first sentence of the Godhood section. It should say:

"Once you've advanced to Anathema, and it's your turn for a scene, the option to call for a throwdown with Ephactha is available."

So you can't actually call for a confrontation with Ephactha until the whole range of time and space is available to you for your scenes. Finding Ephactha is an endeavor of Clarity, not of the Rage which characterizes the Scourge.

Barrier to entry: When I read the part about players preparing scenes I immediately got skeptical about the game being playable. As sad as it is, people willing to prepare are a distinct minority. This would probably work better if it was something you did at the beginning of the session with the other players, so it could be socially enforced.

As GM, I wouldn't have a problem with a player choosing to come up with his scene framing on the fly. I think player prep is voluntary. Personally, I'm pretty damn weak at spontaneous creation of the powerful and exotic. So I'd do the prep.

And a player who didn't prep, and who doesn't feel creatively up to the task of framing a scene can always just specify the type of NPC and require the GM to do the framing. Though I anticipate gameplay will have a level of creative "step on up," and non prepping players who feels they looked creatively week in a first session will find themselves motivated to prep for subsequent sessions.

But a socially reinforced pre-play activity isn't a bad idea at all. It doesn't take hardly any time at all to create a character, so maybe time ought to be spent on some prep.

Paul

Excellent points on the preparation, actually. Clears up my concerns. I'm definitely more of a on-the-fly person when being the player, myself. The text makes a big deal of the random elements, though, so it seems like you're supposed to do it this way and only this way. Like DiV town creation.

We just did our first playtest session, and had a lot of discussion afterwards. Expect a lot of feedback, in terms of what actually happened, in terms of things that didn't work very well, and in terms of possible ways to improve the game that came up during the discussion. But now, I'm going to sleep. :)

Victor,

Fantastic. I can't wait to hear how it went.

Paul