I recently ran a two-part session of Mischa Krilov’s 1984 Prime. An earlier edition of this game won the 2005 Game Chef competition, and the version we played was the GenCon relaunching:

http://www.krilov.com/games/1984prime/

You can buy a copy of the game by private messaging Rossum at The Forge.

I know Mischa, and in fact interestingly he was one of the players. I suspect it’s more common for the game’s designer to run a session). We deliberately avoided that, in part so we could see how we could break the game without the designer/GM’s having an opportunity to patch it on the fly.

I recommend you check out the game’s web site and read the background material there. If you can’t be bothered, here’s the premise: you play a young person who has spent his or her entire life in the HAVEN, a closed ecosystem built in the height of the Cold War as a means of insuring the survival of the human species (and especially America) in the even of nuclear war. In this alternate history, the Cuban Missile Crisis went south, way south, and in 1963 the Americans and Russians nuked the planet. It is now 1984, and the inhabitants of the HAVEN consider whether to unseal their habitat. They have over the last 20 odd years distinguished themselves into several factions, each with in some cases competing and cooperative agendas. These Families include Ackerman for military matters, Roth for science, Miller for eco- and bio-sciences, Hudson for maintenance and engineering, etc.

I suspect that 1984 Prime was written with the intent of being a sort of surface bug hunt, a (please don’t take this as pejorative) kind of Gamma World or Morrow Project. The mechanics are all bid-based (no dice), both as a requirement of that year’s Game Chef, but also to thematically represent the finite resources of the world. Characters have a finite (and small) number of chips for conflicts. Tasks are handled as a threshold value (do you have enough chips to meet the task difficulty? If yes, you succeed, otherwise you fail. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the basics).

Enough about the system. In the game I ran, the HAVEN was alerted (via a few still-functional satellites) of a major satellite impact some hundred miles away. The Families met and elected a team of lower-tier members to investigate the impact. (Some Families had better intelligence than others, and had a more accurate suspicion of what the impact might be). Each player (drawn form separate Families, though not all Families were represented in the PC group), was given a personal briefing, at which point each one was given a secret objective. Naturally I set these up to be, in many cases, conflicting.

As written the current rules don’t allow for equipment. I allowed that the players could have anything one could carry and might be found in, say, a James Bond film circa 1962 (Dr. No). I asked each player to list two minor and one major piece of equipment, all collated on a single sheet of paper. Each player was given 18 poker chips, and blind-bid on any equipment listed in turn (whether they had initially thought of it or not). Inspired a bit by Amber Diceless, this was my way to inject competition and rivalry between the the characters, as they vied for the gear. This also reflected the game’s general theme of paucity of resources.

Unbeknownst to any of the players characters, the impact was a Soviet manned orbital capsule, its occupants long dead, whose orbit had deteriorated and which had automatically deployed its chutes to make a more or less intact landing. (In fact, I seriously doubt such a capsule wouldn’t have simply burned up on reentry, but hey, this is science fiction). The military and spy-oriented Family suspected what the impact was, as their spy satellites tracked most significant orbiting objects for fear some might be weapons. The industrialist Family (the Quinns) also suspected the nature of the impact, and were especially keen to NOT have any artifacts from the impact collected. The Quinns had built most of the HAVEN pre-1963 for the US military, in exchange for having much of their family and upper-echelon corporate personnel sheltered there. In addition, the Quinns had secret dealings with the USSR, and they knew that damning evidence of that could be found on the Soviet craft.

In play, the players squabbled over who should have the only Geiger counter 100 yards out from the HAVEN, and we got to test conflict rules, which worked pretty well. I generally don’t favor inter-player fisticuffs unless justified, but in this case one of the characters was a secret drug addict, and his irrational behavior was certainly justifiable. Between character generation, and intro to the game, and so forth, we got as far as establishing who actually had the Geiger counter by the end of the first session.

In the second session the group traveled overland, generally in the direction of the impact. Along the way they encountered evidence of human survivors of the nuclear war (in the form of a 10 year old boy with a bow) whom, the promptly shot. Eventually they came across a blast crater form a MIRV which had been intended for the HAVEN (those sneaky Russkies!!) which had thankfully missed by several score miles. Circumventing it, they were beset by a clever feral human/chupacabra . Once again, we got to try out conflict mechanics, and those worked well.

Eventually finding the impact artifact, the some in the group eventually unsealed the Soviet capsule, at which point all hell broke loose. The player affiliated with the spy Family began sniping at his investigating comrades, until he was put down by the military player. By the time the group returned to the HAVEN, one was dead, two were wounded, and some of them had discovered the Quinn Family’s past affiliation with the Soviets (quite damning in the atmosphere of patriotic fervor found in the HAVEN). Of the two who discovered Quinn’s treason, one had been wounded and had brought back evidence that he had been in the capsule (and thus succumbed to his wounds once back at the HAVEN due to the spy Family’s interference), and the other kept his mouth shut (and lived). In the end, the heads of Families in the HAVEN decided the surface world was just too dangerous, and resealed their little world.

Between sessions Mischa offered some alternate rules for conflict resolution. I’ll leave it to him to post those in detail, but they involved each player contributing chips to a reserve, from which any player could draw. The total contents of the kitty were kept secret, and if anyone tried to draw beyond the reserve they were penalized.

Running the game was fairly easy; I had prepped an outline of the scenario that ran to 4 or 5 index cards, including stat blocks for nuclear villagers and the Chupacabra, and that was quite sufficient. I think it’s telling that all the party’s wounds were self-inflicted; my mobs didn’t lay a glove on these guys, they all done it to theyselves. Given that player to player tension carried the day, my involvement as GM was pretty minimal, just moving things along and offering pretexts for the players to turn on each other from time to time. I should add too that the character conflict was a result of players playing their characters, rather than a munchkin snarf fest. I’d also like to tip my hat to Mischa, too, who never once tried to trump my GMing with his authorship. To any outside observer, he was just another fine player. That was cool, because I think I took the game in directions he hadn’t originally intended.

In conclusion, I’d say that whatever the author’s intentions for the game (post apocalyptic bug-hunt or not), in our actual sessions it really played out as player vs. player. Naturally I contributed to that as the GM, deliberately creating tension between the characters in their equipping themselves and in their individual mission briefings, but I believe I capitalized on a subtext that was already well-established in the game. If there’s a moral to this post, it’s that games can sometimes turn out differently than the author originally intended, and in this case in my opinion it was for the better.

[1984 Prime] First playtest ever

Hello out there in indie land.

Some of you know that 1984 Prime won the 2005 Game Chef Competition. Some of you even know that I expanded it and had it for sale at GenCon 2005 (with a little help from Clinton, who rocks). A cherished lucky few of you even bought a copy of my game, helping to fund my evacuation during Katrina. I'm deeply grateful.

Last month, I finally playtested my game for the first time. Feel free to <a href="http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/1984_Prime.php">take a look at the Game Chef entry for an overview, but know that a lot has changed between the Game Chef release and the initial release that is my working playtest version. I've got a lot more setting and different enough mechanics so as to render the PDF entry almost useless for deep discussion. For the purposes of this post, know that 1984 Prime still makes use of colored chips and Karma-based task and conflict resolution mechanics.

Here's my observations, somewhat generalized. I plan to take some design discussion over to the appropriate forum, so moderators please be advised.

Firstly, I didn't instigate this playtest session. One fellow in my group told me that he had an idea for a scenario, and would I mind if he ran it? There's no way I would turn down an offer of a free playtest, particularly if it acts as a catalyst for my own efforts. I've basically felt extremely hesitant about continuing work or selling more copies without a playtest. I don't know if this is a real barrier or an mental one. (Welcome to the Actual Play forum as a free therapy soapbox.)

I nearly only observed the session, though. Taking the lead from board and card game design, I originally wanted to keep as close as possible to a blind playtest, with minimal input and insight from me the designer. After all, how can you really tell if the Game As Run matches the Game As Designed or even the Game As Presented? (I'm sure  different jargon exists, but that doesn't concern me. These terms work well enough in my offline discussions, so there you go.)

I wanted to play my game, but I also wanted to see how relative strangers interpreted the mechanics as written. The group twisted my arm and got me to play. I'm glad they did, as I had more fun and felt less like a creepy voyeur. I'm glad I didn't run the game, though. I had my hands full keeping notes on the session. My GM fu is not strong enough to run and observe and note-take at the same time, so I really recommend playtesting by not running. Does anyone else do this? Has anyone done live blind playtests? Does it work?

One of the players lent me a microcassette recorder and a few tapes. I taped the majority of the session, but I haven't yet transferred it into some digital format. I may hold off on the transfer, but I now have the recording and can go back at leisure.

As originally planned, the scenario would only last one session. Due to a player arriving later than anticipated and some glaring holes in the rules, we didn't finish. We did wrap up the adventure/scenario in the second session, with tweaked mechanics. It took about a month for schedules to realign, unfortunately. We had a total of six folks- one GM and five players (including myself). Two are a couple, and we didn't have the girlfriend-as-casual-gamer problem you sometimes see- she's a gamer and was very excited about playing 1984 Prime. Logistically, and I sat as far away as possible from the GM, both for distancing authority and to reduce any monopolization of screen time. I also sprung for pizza for everyone, including the host's wife, who was gracious enough to let us take over their home for a few hours.

The limited GenCon printing contains twenty-four pregen characters, plenty enough to pick and choose and hit the ground running. The GM chose some and handed them out, asking a little bit of preference, but mostly setting up the dynamic. Each had a little bit of history and background (much like the Game Chef entry), including a Motive and a Secret. The GM told us we could change our secrets to preserve the mystery.

I really like the presented scenario so far- likely it will appear in the next release of the manuscript. I also realize (as have others) the importance of having a test scenario.

Again taking a page from board and card game design, I emailed around a set of postmortem questions. I used these:

Setting:
What worked?
What didn't?
What three things stand out as cool?

System:
What worked?
What's missing?
What sort of feel did the mechanics evoke? (Respond as theory-laden as needed.)

Physical book:
What's unclear?
What do you think of the cover and the back flavor text?
What do you think of the layout, fonts, images, etc inside?

Session/overall:
What stands out in your mind as part of the in-game world?
What stands out in an out-of-game context?
What sucked the most?
What was the best?

One of my players noted the following, missing question:
Would you play it again if you didn't know the author?

I'll leave it to my players to post their own thoughts and words here, but
has anyone else played my game? Some of you bought it- please email or PM me- I'd love to hear from you, plus I want to get yall an upgrade PDF once I finish it.

Obligatory plug:
Vance Kelly did <a href="http://www.krilov.com/games/1984prime/">the cover art for the print version. Check out <a href="http://www.vancekelly.net/">his online portfolio and throw him some work.

To sum up, here's what I learned:

• Unless you're explicitly testing character creation, have pregenerated characters.
• Record the playtest session.
• Consider not running to observe closer.
• Have a followup questionnaire and press for answers.
• If you purchased a copy of 1984 Prime, please email me!

MDK

Hi all:
I was a player in the 1984 Prime game mentioned above by Francois. Here are my thoughts on the game, the adventure and everything…

> Setting:
> What worked?

The alt-history rocks. I don’t know if it would mesh too well with the 20 and under crowd but for an old geezer like me it was a blast. I like that the setting takes the tropes of the era seriously. It’s definitely not B-movie camp, although I guess that’s a direction the game could take if a group wanted it to.

>What didn't?

Although I liked the dynamics of the families, they seemed a little constrained to me. It was hard for me to understand how intermarriage wouldn’t have broken down a few of the familial conflicts. But that’s just the anthropology courses speaking.

One of the things we discussed post-game was making the families an influence on character behavior through mechanics rather than a statement of who the character does/doesn’t like. The families as they are now remind me a bit of White Wolf's Clans. That’s not bad, mind you. It definitely facilitates politics in the group. I'm a System-Matters guy, though.

> What three things stand out as cool?

That the cause of the apocalypse and the state of the world outside are loosely defined in the setting.

That the game sets the players in a key position to influence the game world through play by being the first people to go on the surface.

The retro-alt-history and that the prevalent ideals and prejudices of the time are reflected in the families.

> System:
> What worked?

I liked the non-opposed skill mechanics a lot. The one where you succeed if the character’s rating is higher than the difficulty and can take “damage” to your rating to boost it in order to tackle problems that exceed the character’s abilities.

I also like Expertise. It helps define a character’s role in the group without all the junk associated with “classes”.

And Initiative. I think 1984 Prime handles initiative very, very well.

> What's missing?

A cleaner system for taking damage. A cleaner system for escalating and resolving conflict. All those go together under the Big Tent of Conflict Resolution.

> What sort of feel did the mechanics evoke? (Respond as theory-laden as needed.)

I’ve said this before in post-game discussions. I’m not sure that the game needs Body, Mind and Soul chips as separate currencies. I’m not convinced that it wouldn’t be better to have “Effort” quantified as a single currency and free up the system to have other aspects of the game, like “Political Sway”, become additional currencies.

I never got the feel of dealing with a limited resource during the game, as I could always switch to Mind or Soul if I was low on Body. And bide my time until I replenished chips.

I did like the draw from the hat thing that Francois introduced in the last session. But I wasn’t keen on the blind bid mechanics. I felt we had too few chips to have a meaningful blind bid system because the most anyone could reasonably put out there was 3 or 4 chips at a time. If we stick with characters having between 5-9 chips in every stat, I'm not sure if we shouldn't just go straight Karma with the system. A single currency might work better though because players would have more chips to spend and would have to decide what to spend them on. So we get a wider variance in blind bid and a situation where chips spent on Mind (where a character may be strong) were chips that he couldn't spend later in the game on Body (where he might be weak).

> Physical book:
> What's unclear?

I had a hard time finding things every now and then. I would try to look up this family or that mechanic and find myself searching a bit for it. A more detailed Table of Contents would eliminate this issue, though.

> What do you think of the cover and the back flavor text?

Great. Awesome. I love them.

> What do you think of the layout, fonts, images, etc inside?

Interior art is fabulous. I felt the font could be a little smaller and the distinction between the beginning and end of a chapter a little more obvious. But I thought the content was solid and the artwork was definitely v v v cool.

> Session/overall:
> What stands out in your mind as part of the in-game world?

The ‘60s mindset. You know, commies are out to get us. We’re the good guys. That nationalistic exuberance that characterized the United States immediately following WWII.

> What stands out in an out-of-game context?

The politics between the families being played out at the table.

> What sucked the most?

I felt a shorter prologue would’ve been more effective. I didn't feel protagonized until I left the Haven. I knew that I was going to be going up to the surface. There wasn't any point where I could've said "Heck no, send Bob!" and then had my own separate storyline going in the Haven. So the sooner I got out onto the surface the better.

> What was the best?

Being able to give a big thumbs up or thumbs down to the outside world. We were like the groundhogs of the Haven. If we saw our shadow, well, that’s 20 more years in the bunker!

> One of my players noted the following, missing question:
> Would you play it again if you didn't know the author?

Yes. But it’s not a game that I would try to get a group to play. I’d bring it up if the group was into alternate history and wanted a new spin on a post-apocalyptic game. I'd run it in another group because I could kludge through the system's vaguer points but I don’t know if I’d play it in another group unless we had some house rules or a GM who I was confident could pull it off.

In summary, I like the game. On a scale of "Want to burn it", "Wouldn't buy it used", "Like it", "Would run into a burning building to save my copy" and "Worship it like the False Idol it is", it falls squarely in the middle of my RPG spectrum. Right alongside other games like Nobilis, Feng Shui, Buffy, HeroQuest sans Glorantha, Unknown Armies and Paranoia. With a bit of work on the system, it could easily become a game I really like and join the ranks of Dogs in the Vineyard, Sorcerer, MURPG with a Service Pack of house-rules, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds with tSoY Keys, FATE with tSoY Keys and Star Wars d6.

I was also a player in the 1984 Prime game mentioned above. The following is practically my exact reply email:

> Setting:
> What worked?

The basics of the setting is pretty standard, and I'm already a fan. There's a twist there though...And it's that twist that makes it. Sort of what Francois was bringing up before. How it seems to be a game about whats outside the HAVEN but it's really about what happens when the parents go on vacation and leave the oldest sibling in charge. While the cats away and all that...

> What didn't?

It was a bit hard to keep in mind that I was in an alternate history. What may help is a section of information about what did happen (Glenn has orbited Earth, Peace Corps is around, Korean War, organ transplants, Elvis, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Catcher in the Rye) and what didn't happen (man never walked on the moon [yet the Kennedy speech _did_ happen]; never Beatlemania; JFK, RFK, MLK, never assassinated [still alive?]; US involvement in Vietnam).

Meaning, the world wasn't entirely recorded, and we made up a lot of it. Yet, it's clear the author could easily go off on how they want the world to be... and I want to play in that.

> What three things stand out as cool?

1. Hierarchy of trust. I felt a sort of Marines quality of "God, Country, Corps" thing going on. Among each other, there didn't seem to be much doubt we were all in it for the HAVEN (if all of us weren't, I was oblivious), next we were in it for our families, and then if we had encountered something foreign, we would have been in it together I assume.

2. Core mechanics seem good. There are hiccups based on the core parts, but in all, there was a good feeling about having my chips sitting in front of me and I liked the thought of deciding whether to enter "negotiations" in case I need my wits only moments from now when the radscorpians attack.

3. General world. A distinctiveness seemed to be there, despite the setting and rules being referenceable to already existing settings and rules. I like the comparison between life below and life above. There could be a slight reflection in the rules...something that changes when you go topside that blatantly states that this world is brand new and it would fit right in.

> System:
> What worked?

Three stats works for me. Good amount of rulebase there. Stats are easily identifiable. "Betting" chips has a good feel. Diceless takes it away from the D&D descendants, giving a better opportunity to stand alone.

> What's missing?

I think trying to use the same mechanic for several types of resolution made it choppy. Body, Mind, and Soul chips sort of all represent the same basic mechanic. It's like snacking on three different kinds of toast when I'm questioning why there's no jam or butter. I hope that sounds right.

> What sort of feel did the mechanics evoke? (Respond as theory-laden as needed.)

There was certainly a "this isn't a ROLL playing game", but there wasn't the "strategy" feeling that I'm thinking was part of the design...

For example (I mentioned this to Scott about Soap), if there were another part of the mechanic that gave me an element of surprise. Hiding the chips tries to accomplish this missing element, and does so, but just barely. Perhaps there could be an additional ... something. I don't know.

For example, I wager my chips, you wager yours. Etc, etc. But then, I pull out my die and roll a bonus number, and all of a sudden pull out a win. Something restrictive, in case of a dire circumstance. This mechanic would be very choppy, but I hope you see what I'm going for...

To explain what I mean further: in cards, the betting system builds tension because there's an unknown factor, the hand. Making the unknown factor the chips themselves detracts from any tension on the betting. In cards, when I bet five hundred dollars in chips, I could be bluffing. With 1984', there's no chance of a bluff...

> Physical book:
> What's unclear?

The rules and the flavor need a more extreme separation. Pointers would help a lot (e.g. under the chips section, a pointer to the damage section for how to regain chips...), clear divisions in sections and sub-sections might help too.

> What do you think of the cover and the back flavor text?

Cover is perfect for all intents and purposes. Excellent image.. I just realized however that I had been thinking we were in the mountains the whole time (like in Red Dawn) and the cover seems to make it a more suburban feel. The mountain thing came from the text inside though, and so I got a sort of reversed introduction...

Flavor text is good. There is something I can't place my finger on though. For instance, too many inspirations converging, maybe. More after the next question...

> What do you think of the layout, fonts, images, etc inside?

It works. Coming from a commercial art/perfectionist background, there's too much white space for me. This is something I don't think I should go off about, since my only argument is that minimizing white space saves on printing costs. Suppressing my anality lets me realize, once again... it works.

Also, coming from a creative writing background, I can't walk around the game store, looking at other games, and say "this game looks like it came from 1984 Prime." I'm more likely to say "1984 reminds me of such and such..."

> Session/overall:
> What stands out in your mind as part of the in-game world?

To continue from the last topic, part of the world that stands out is the 50's feel in a post-apocalypse game. I'm not sure if it was planned, but it seemed these people got locked up and there culture never grew. They went in as iconic 50's and they seem to come out as iconic 50's. Yet, there's no flavor for whether I should be thinking this. It comes mainly from the pictures on the character sheet and the names (McCarthy).

Analogously, I can imagine some small towns that are relatively disconnected from the world that seem to still have a late 80's/early 90's feel to them even now.

The pre-made characters were the best thing to get me into the game. The descriptions on them are very good. I had a real sense of what my character was like. I had a given motive and secret. Very helpful.

> What stands out in an out-of-game context?

Chips are fun. Simple mechanics rule. There absolutely needs to be mechanics for inter-family political clout. The families play such an important role, yet, there's this ambiguous, "Do I like this Ackerman enough to back him, because us Hudsons normally don't..."

I had a SA with almost everyone at the table. That's no good, and although it's very clear I can do whatever I want, all the families have this rivalry for a reason. There should be something tangible I can point to that says, "Yes, I can agree with this Ackerman because they seem nice."

In addition, perhaps the alignments of families need to be... hmm, maybe more polarized. Specifically, maybe the Hudsons can only SA with one other family. And SD with one other. WA and WD with two families each, etc. That way the families aren't two groups of families, but eight families with eight interests.

> What sucked the most?

Too many house rules. Necessary house rules suck the most to any system. If this weren't a playtest I would have been disappointed that I was looking forward to finding out what happened with the crash and never got to it because we got hung up on how to do something.

> What was the best?

The best part was the pre-made relationships. There was a feeling for "the world as we knew it". Spending time underground before we go out really gives you a basis for inter-party politics later. Going around and describing our days as if we have this regular life, this boring life... Obviously it gave us a reason to seek an adventurous moment almost immediately after we left the HAVEN.

Parts of it were very unique. Post-apocalypse meets Fathers Knows Best?. Very unique to me.

And now to answer the one missing question.

Would you play it again if you didn't know the author?

I think I would. The rules gave us a few moments of non-play, but that happens with any new system being learned. Second, I actually loved my character. And I'm very picky. So I'd jump into that character again quickly (perhaps with a tweak or two, but still).

Boy, I hope this all made sense.

I had a good time overall, by the way, and so it didn't fail in it's sole mission. Good job and well done.