Throne Of The Spider God : First Playtest, Session 1

Two weeks ago I had the first TOTSG playtest.

There were myself, Grant, & Stuart, all in our 30's. Stuart's my brother-in-law. I got to know Grant & his wife through my own wife's mother's group (Grant's 2-yr old is the same age as our oldest son). I socialise some with Grant, more so with Stuart, always in the context of partners & kids (BBQ's, swimming lessons, visits, family outings etc).

Myself
Apart from a session of DitV 3 weeks ago, this is the first time I've either played or GM'd for about 20 years. Play experience is D&D, AD&D, Palladium. Mostly I GM'd. Somehow RPGs became something I read about & fooled around at designing, but no longer played.

Grant 
He played traditional RPG's with his brother & a group of friends. Mostly AD&D, some other games he is kind of vague about that sound either fantasy or cyberpunk. Always the player, never the GM. Last played about 10 years ago.

Stuart
He played with a group that was pretty big (around 10 people at its height). He was part of the core that gamed together from middle high school through college. Only AD&D, only a player. Last played nearly 10 years ago.

I rang these two guys three weeks ago & was kind of suprised they both were enthusiastic about playing. We've meet the last two Wednesdays at my house for 3 hours.

Outline:
The goal of TOTSG (hey, it says it in the blurb) is: "To create heroic characters and settings through fast, exciting gameplay".

The idea in TOTSG is that play takes place in "adventures", based on the classic S&S short story-style of literature. Each adventure consists of an intital Setup, where the group decides the adventure goal & prioritizes a list of perils the heroes (PCs) will face. Subsequent sessions work to resolve the adventure goal. Rinse & repeat. A goal of play is high levels of player input re: hero/world creation (which both start from scratch from the initial Setup). Equality of authority between players/GM is another major design goal, with different players taking the role of  Guide (GM) for different adventures recommended.

Session 1: The Setup

On the whole, the session went as well as I could have hoped. By coincidence, the text basically works exactly like Chris's sections "Focus" & "Character Creation" (& in a more qualified way, "Flags") in his excellent Flag Framing article, except the TOTSG text is a little more structured.

It gave pretty much exactly the results I was hoping for: 10 formal perils (Flags/adventure seeds), + a list of informal flags.
It also sequed really well into the character creation, which was what I was aiming for. I thought Grant & Stuart might flounder here somewhat, given their background in roll-em up chargen (TOTSG uses player-driven nar-type chargen with no rolls). But nope: they took to it like  veterans. Don't know how much credit the ruleset can take here. My suspicion is, both these guys have strong Nar tendencies.

How well these results translate into the gameplay I'm after is another matter. Play will tell.

At the end of The Setup, we had:
* A list of the adventure's perils
* The adventure's taks (resolution of which signals it's end)
* the adventure's patron (the person who wants the task complete)
* two characters with a True Name, a Passion, a Heroic Deed, and a Fated Deed
* the backdrop for the setting: the sea-bound city-state of Jatavia, & an exotic land of katana-wielders from whom Grant's hero stole something called 'the Black Dragon' sometime in the past
* the opening scene decided on (but not played)

All up it took just over 2.5 hours, followed by another 40 mins spent broadly going over elements of the mechanics the guys were interested in. The time is also about what I was hoping for. I was mindful of time & kept things ticking along, but not overly so (at least I didn't feel that way).

A few days after the first session Grant volunteered a 450-word character background that included lots of world-building. Stuart did the same later. In total, I'd say about half of the current world-creation ideas have come from me, and about half from the two of them (combined). I'm pretty jazzed about that, not least because they volunteered it. I emphasized the shared-creation stuff pretty heavily duing The Setup, but never explictly asked them to contribute beyond "have a think about X about your character, let me know next time what you come up with if you've got time".

Here's their hero sheets. The interesting thing to me here is their Passions & Betraying Signs. These are designed to give substantial bonuses during play. Although I made it very clear that taking these as 'powerz' was entirely legitimate, both players immediately chose to use them to make their characters more interesting, not more powerful.

This was also obvious in their choice of perils & game-world contributions: invariably my own were setting-oriented, while theirs were character-oriented.

Grant's hero:

True Name: Merchant prince of Geldhoven (3)
Use Name: (captain) Jack Daniels
Passion:  to get back home.

Supernatural price: None
XP : 0
Deeds:
Fated:  get back Chrysos Amalfini's daughter from the Serpent Cult
        Betraying sign: to be decided
Heroic: Stole the black dragon from  Jen Kiang
        Betraying sign: tattoo on face

Weapons: Katana(6), 1 dagger (2), 1 garrotte ( 1)

Armor:   Mail under leather coat (6), leather  pants(2)

loot:    2 snuff boxes, 1 small wooden carved dragon on a leather necklace (not worth a sheckle)

Stuart's hero:

True Name: Ship's Cook's First Mate(3) [the cook's boy]
Use Name: to be decided
Passion:  Impressing his superiors

Supernatural price: None
XP : 0
Fated:  get back Chrysos Amalfini's daughter from the Serpent Cult
        Betraying sign: people notice I have an unusual interest in Cult
Heroic: killed Capt Deloisio with stealth and a carving knife
        Betraying sign: ring of the naval elite (stolen from Capt's dead hand)

Weapons: 2 wave-bladed daggers (3), 2 hidden daggers(2), 2 throwing starts

Armor:   Stout leather coat (3), hardened leather bracers & greaves (4)

loot:    Utility belt with rope, tiny grapnels etc

Would you say it was your own words to them that caused them to be so interested in sharing the world creation? Or was it that they got to set up the flags, and saw how fun it was? Or both?

Next time you playtest with a different group, try not to encourage them at all, and see if the system propells things that way all on it's own.

Mike