We played Vincent's newest game, Art, Grace, and Guts at our monthly local roleplayers' meetup today, and it was plenty fun.

The game, if you haven't seen it, is predicated on the idea that you will get a situation from a random situation generator and then play characters explicitly or implicitly in that situation. Our situation consisted of:

- A tyrannical pit-wyrm rising up from its sleep.
- Warrior-mystics protecting their relics of old.
- An old fortress in a mountain-pass.
- A reclusive enchantress returning home.

The three explicit characters in this were all we needed to play: the pit-wyrm, the head of the warrior-mystics, and the enchantress. At this point, everyone selects a character going around the table, ending with the GM. This is super-interesting, because our story could have gone many different ways, depending on who the GM played. As it turns out, Jason picked the wyrm, Lisa picked the head of the warrior-mystics and I as the GM picked the enchantress. We made our characters, and ended up with a neat map of stuff: the warrior-mystics occupied the ancient fortress, which had been the enchantress' home. 142 years ago, they defeated her and banished her, and she now was returning. There was a relic in the fort that if the enchantress got, she would do great harm. (It was insinuated that she'd end the world, but that's pretty big. My personal thought is that she'd control the wyrm, which is pretty bad.) The wyrm and the enchantress were former lovers, and he'd betrayed her against the monks, which meant they hated each other.

This is all awesome stuff for play! We were pretty excited at this point.

The game took about two hours to play, and the scenes and conflicts went kind of like the following. The wyrm attacks the mystics, using his secret followers within their ranks and the captain of the mystics won. The enchantress showed up in the confusion and vied for control of the mystics, promising them that she could lead them to destroy the wyrm, and she gained control over them (more on this mechanically below.) The wyrm threatened the local town, making sure no food went to the mystics, forcing their hand. The former captain of the mystics convinced her lieutenant to assassinate the enchantress, but the enchantress ensorcelled him with her own blood and forced him to stab the captain, and then she bedded him. The mystics, driven mad and violent by the enchantress (seriously - they all painted themselves with her black and red runes and went nuts) went into the wyrm's chambers and netted him so the enchantress could emotionally torture him, but the captain snuck back into the fort and got the relic - one of the wyrm's claws, which he may or may not have given up willingly years ago in order to banish the enchantress - and saved the wyrm by attacking the enchantress, stabbing her with the wyrm's claw. The wyrm and captain parted ways, knowing they were only temporary allies, and the captain went to wander the earth, as the wyrm had slain most of her mystics in the battle.

So that was cool. The thing that was hardest for us to learn to do was the fortune at the beginning that this game has. (Maybe it's not called that. I don't know.) You roll dice, and then you decide what your action is. This works well, but took a few tries before it felt natural.

We did have lots of rules questions for Vincent, which I'll post here, I guess.

- On specialities: can the GM just make up appropriate ones for the chapter at the beginning? I gave the captain a speciality for her troops and the wyrm a speciality for his fire breath, but they weren't on the character sheet. The enchantress stole the troops early on in the game, which made her nigh unstoppable for a while. The wyrm finally burnt them to a crisp.

- On NPCs: Lisa made a lieutenant for her captain in the middle of the game. I had her roll her influencing people (I think) for him to kill the enchantress. Did that make sense, or should he have been a new speciality we made right then? Or should she have just rolled her "defending myself?"

- On stakes: Can I say "my character kills your character" as a challenge? How about "you lose your speciality?"

- On "we owe:" Why the caveat that you're owed, as long as the dice against you don't double right off the bat? It seems like you'd be owed more. I could see it working the opposite way: you're owed, unless you double their dice with the first roll.

- On "we owe," part 2: does "on top of the list" really mean on top of the list, or the person who's owed the most? We played with "owed the most," and it worked really well.

- On ending the chapter: it says the player owed the most gets to choose any one element from anywhere in the whole chart of elements. Does that mean any element from all the original C&C tables?

- Can a GM character be a player character in the next chapter? Please say yes. This is cool, if so.

Again, Vincent and all, holy shit, this game is fun.

You know I was mad at the dice, because I (the wyrm Slétta) failed in both my conflicts.  And I think I may have a problem with this, because unlike a regular old stake-setting game, in AG&G the loser is pretty constrained, and the outcomes were, for me, a little unsatisfying.  The winner defines the stakes, and as the loser I can choose to accept them (and give) or to keep fighting, at a significant penalty, and hope for a chance to re-define them in my favor.  There was never the satisfying feeling of knowing that, no matter which way the conflict went, it would be a really cool outcome.  As a result I felt that I didn't actually contribute much to the game:

First conflict - I lose.  The salient detail I introduce, a betrayal among the warrior-mystics, has no effect in play. 

Second "conflict" - I introduce the idea of starving out the warrior-mystics and the enchantress, and this is hand-waved in as a reason for them to attack my character in his lair, after that had already been established.  No effect on play.

Third conflict - I lose.  My character plays out the final scene trapped in a net.  I use his feiry breath to kill a bunch of warrior-mystics nobody is too concerned about anyway (this has the minor effect of denying Clinton a specialty he stole from Lisa, changing the dynamic between the two of them). 

I honestly can't tell if this was just me having a bad day or if losing isn't fun in AG&G.  I felt like I created an interesting character whose actions were completely incidental to the story because I couldn't win a conflict.  On the positive side, the game is chock full of cool stuff like the "owe" list, which is a wonderful way to encourage people to take on big challenges, and the way stats and types of conflict are used and interrelate.  Plus the Oracle, which allowed us to jump-start a crazy big game in no time, and the way ongoing stories tie into one another.  I definitely want to play again.

Hooray!

Clinton wrote:
The thing that was hardest for us to learn to do was the fortune at the beginning that this game has. (Maybe it's not called that. I don't know.) You roll dice, and then you decide what your action is. This works well, but took a few tries before it felt natural.

- On specialities: can the GM just make up appropriate ones for the chapter at the beginning? I gave the captain a speciality for her troops and the wyrm a speciality for his fire breath, but they weren't on the character sheet. The enchantress stole the troops early on in the game, which made her nigh unstoppable for a while. The wyrm finally burnt them to a crisp.

- On NPCs: Lisa made a lieutenant for her captain in the middle of the game. I had her roll her influencing people (I think) for him to kill the enchantress. Did that make sense, or should he have been a new speciality we made right then? Or should she have just rolled her "defending myself?"

- On stakes: Can I say "my character kills your character" as a challenge? How about "you lose your speciality?"

- On "we owe:" Why the caveat that you're owed, as long as the dice against you don't double right off the bat? It seems like you'd be owed more. I could see it working the opposite way: you're owed, unless you double their dice with the first roll.

- On "we owe," part 2: does "on top of the list" really mean on top of the list, or the person who's owed the most? We played with "owed the most," and it worked really well.

- On ending the chapter: it says the player owed the most gets to choose any one element from anywhere in the whole chart of elements. Does that mean any element from all the original C&C tables?

- Can a GM character be a player character in the next chapter? Please say yes. This is cool, if so.

Jason wrote:
The winner defines the stakes, and as the loser I can choose to accept them (and give) or to keep fighting, at a significant penalty, and hope for a chance to re-define them in my favor.  There was never the satisfying feeling of knowing that, no matter which way the conflict went, it would be a really cool outcome.  As a result I felt that I didn't actually contribute much to the game:

lumpley wrote:

- On "we owe," part 2: does "on top of the list" really mean on top of the list, or the person who's owed the most? We played with "owed the most," and it worked really well.

Hmm. This question sets off my spidey sense.

What did you use the "we owe" list for?

It really means on top of the list, the first name listed.

When you lose - humiliated-lose, I mean, when you're doubled - you should be proposing outcomes to the winner just as hard as the winner's proposing outcomes to you. Take it as a challenge: "can I come up with something so awesome that the winner likes it better than hitting me with the stick?" It's totally an opportunity to throw curves into the story.

Jason wrote:
Second "conflict" - I introduce the idea of starving out the warrior-mystics and the enchantress, and this is hand-waved in as a reason for them to attack my character in his lair, after that had already been established.  No effect on play.

Oh, now I really want to play again.  We were giving the winner in a conflict absolute fiat in determining the outcome.  Which, in retrospect, was a little dumb of us. 

I'm still not getting the "owe" list sort procedure, Vincent.  Is the intention this:  The earliest player to receive an owe who does not discharge it during the session automatically has their PC continue in the next session? 

Clinton wrote:
You can use it [the "we owe" list] to get re-rolls. (That's how we read the playtest document. Let me know if we were wrong.)

So, if there's Alba, Bart, and Charise, and Alba takes on Bart twice, with less dice than Bart, and then Charise takes on Bart with more dice than Bart, the "we owe" list looks like this? - Alba, Alba, Bart.

Jason wrote:
I'm still not getting the "owe" list sort procedure, Vincent.  Is the intention this:  The earliest player to receive an owe who does not discharge it during the session automatically has their PC continue in the next session?

lumpley wrote:
But hey, I've been thinking about spending times your character's owed for rerolls, and I'm rethinking it. So here come the probing questions:

How often did you use that rule?

What were the conflicts?

Did rerolling contribute to the fun?

OK, I grasp the sort procedure now, cool.  On using "owes" for re-rolls:

lumpley wrote:
How often did you use that rule?
What were the conflicts?
Did rerolling contribute to the fun?

Oh!

We played again Monday night and I'm hoping Clinton will produce some AP love.  But until then, a question and a comment:

Vincent, is there anything to prevent me, at the top of the owe list, from picking a character that somebody else has played to be my own in the next episode?  This came up.  We really stressed a light ownership attitude, so it was no big deal, but we wondered.

Comment:  I was telling my wife Autumn about how the episodes are structured, and the way a single character is the bridge between episodes, and she said, "So it's like Boccaccio's Decameron.  Or the movie Slacker."  And I fell down. 

Jason:

Unless I'm mistaken, it should be the character that is "owed," not the player. . .  Yep.

Playtest Document Text:

1. Check out the "we owe" list. Which character's name is on top? That character's automatically in the next chapter.

My character is owed; I get to pick.  What if I want to pick a character somebody else has been playing?  That's my question. 

Here's my stab, let me know if I've missed your question.

My character is "a cruel and ambitious young murderer-for-hire," Anter. Your character is "a person of society, beautiful but past her youth," Brana. Anter's at the top of the list.

Anter MUST BE in the next chapter. I don't get to choose for someone else to be in the chapter instead.

However, I do get to choose something, anything, to be in the next chapter as well.

May I choose "a person of society, beautiful but past her youth" - and specify that, in fact, it's Brana? I surely may.

At that point, it falls to you: do you want to play Brana in this chapter? If so, cool, you get to. Do you want to play, oh, the "brash and tempermental petty prince" instead? You can - but that means you're ceding Brana to the GM to play as an NPC.

-Vincent

Cool, that answers my question.

But it makes me ask one.

Let's say that Characters: A gentlewoman-burglar, stylish and daring. (City)  came up in the first chapter, and became a PC named Tamara.  My character is owed first for Chapter 2.  Can I select Characters: A gentlewoman-burglar, stylish and daring. (City) off the chart, but then say "But this one isn't Tamara, it's her daughter, who takes after her. . ."  Essential redefining the element for the new chapter?  If yes, who's option is it to define?  Instinct would have it as the player of the owed character, but, you never know.

Crap, I almost forgot.

A related question:  What if the owed person wants to bring in something that is not actually on the chart, but has been established in play?  An item that attained signifigance in a prior chapter, for instance.  Can they name that and draw it in?

Marhault wrote:
Let's say that Characters: A gentlewoman-burglar, stylish and daring. (City) came up in the first chapter, and became a PC named Tamara. My character is owed first for Chapter 2. Can I select Characters: A gentlewoman-burglar, stylish and daring. (City) off the chart, but then say "But this one isn't Tamara, it's her daughter, who takes after her. . ." Essential redefining the element for the new chapter? If yes, who's option is it to define? Instinct would have it as the player of the owed character, but, you never know.

Marhault wrote:
A related question: What if the owed person wants to bring in something that is not actually on the chart, but has been established in play? An item that attained signifigance in a prior chapter, for instance. Can they name that and draw it in?