Edits have been made to the Acts of Evil playtest rules:

With the goal of resolving the adversity (lack of uncertainty to dice rolls) issue reported by the Utrecht group, the core mechanic of the player rolling a die pool against a target number has been entirely replaced with an opposed roll system in which both the player and the GM throw pools of dice and compare counts of primes. (What could be more occult than primes!)

With the goal of improving the survivability of NPCs, Resolution Against Victims has been changed so it only pays 3 points of Power for killing if it's a Victim not of the player's own creation.

With the goal of preventing a player from winning the game in one round, while still allowing for multiple rolls in a scene (rather than one-roll-and-done), the calculation of the GM's pool for a Resolution roll was written to increase by one d6 for each prior Resolution roll of the same type by the player in the current scene.

The changes do not directly resolve:

If your Clarity hits zero, and you don't have any Underlings, there's no way to increase your Clarity. And you can't create any Underlings. You're stuck. There are ways to fix this, but I'm not sure what makes the most sense.

Concerns about traits not being meaningful enough, since they don't factor into Victim rolls.

Players not choosing to frame their own scenes.

And the example of play has not been edited to reflect the new dice mechanics.

But I consider it ready for playtest. (I'm hopeful the improved survivability of NPCs, along with the Humanize and Derogate Trait mechanics, positions them for capturing the dramatic and creative interests of the players.) I remain interested in the big unanswered questions from this thread, and now about this one too:

Should the GM be able to give traits to Nobodies when framing scenes?

And I recommend, for playtest purposes, adjusting the advancement thresholds so a character advances to Scourge when the lowest of his Aspects equals 3, and to Anathema when the lowest of his Aspects equals 5.

Thanks,

Paul

Well, I'll discuss this with some teenagers hereabouts. They like MLwM a lot, so I imagine that I have a fair shot of arranging a playtest for the game. I'll let you know how it goes.