So, a gaming friend of mine was visiting, and we were hot to play lots of indie games. In practice it was rather difficult, with all the local teens in various summer jobs and other engagements. In the end we had ourselves a threesome with one of my favourite teenagers. The games started with a Dust Devils scenario Sami, this friend of mine, had devised, and continued with Acts of Evil later in the evening; we played a session's worth of DD and looked around for other options, pretty much. Because I had a good grasp on the rules after the IRC playtest (note to self: increase playtest motivation with IRC tests; they -> play), I suggested AoE. Both Sami and Sipi, the teenager, are experienced indie players and fans of MLwM, so an opportunity to take a look at Paul's new game got them hooked pretty easily, although I had to break the tie with Spione in the initial discussion.

I'm a bit busy right now, so I won't probably get everything relevant said in one piece. I'll start going through my checklist, and stop when I have to go. Continue later.

Conditions: in my home, pretty late, after dinner. We played for four hours or so, pretty fast-paced, and discussed the game afterwards. I estimate perhaps 8-12 rounds or so. I was pretty careful with the rules, and we played according to the letter in almost everything. The only non-deliberate exception was that we were somewhat random in either lowering resistance or increasing player dice with Power - in practice it proved difficult to remember that you don't increase your own dice with your own Power.

Fiction: we rolled one plaqa, created by Sipi. He opted for renaissance Italy, created two NPCs: a Nobody police chief of Naples and a Victim Courtesan, Rebecca. Sipi's character was a young artist, Sami's a woman student of Greek language. I was GMing. The overall content touched on both NPCs, with the police chief being primary. The high points of the session were a prolonged feud between the PC artist and Leonardo DaVinci; Sami's character becoming Scourge; the police chief being victimised. I'll touch on the dramatic arcs later, there's some important tendencies.

Scene framing: We've been discussing this, Paul, so I made a consicious decision to not rule on it either way. I just told the players that they have turns, in which there is scene framing, and took the opportunity to see what kind of scenes we made without any particular limitations. I also used the "general cumulative penalty", meaning that each roll caused an additional resistance die for the next roll in turn, status changes excepted. Result: over half of the turns ended voluntarily within the same location. Over half ended with the same cast. Only a couple changed time. If cast was changed, location was not, and vice versa; the exceptions were singular. Time and location were both changed for the same reasons: the initial frame caused a narrative arc the player wanted to follow, or the reason was purely aesthetic. Cast was added to, however, for different reason: if the dramatic conflict in the immediate frame was resolved, both players and GM introduced new cast when necessary, for either dramatic or mechanical reasons. Two or three times a player opted to end his turn simply because the dramatic tension was resolved. My conclusion: players never made choices that would have been bad for story creation or mechanics. Thus I see no reason for any limits on player-turn narration. On the other hand, players felt pretentious and uncomfortable when they were allowed to continue their turn mechanically when they had nothing further to say about the situation. Therefore we played, quite naturally, according to the "dramatic turn constraint": the turn continues until the character goals are resolved, or a roll is failed.

Some sample scenes, to give a more detailed idea of how it went down:
- Jeanne Giovanni, Sami's character, is surprised by the police chief in the act of forbidden magical ritual when she's trying to travel through time for the first time (my frame, Sami's choice). She overpowers him (resolution vs. Nobody, Flesh Aspect) by pure force, drags him up from her cellar laboratory into the garden, and throws him into the sea (half a mile) using preternatural strength. Then she leaps to the beach herself, and breaks him down with her voice, inducing an alcoholic fit (status change to victim). End of scene. (There was plenty of color narration about the tides, sand and stone and so forth at the beach, and likewise in the laboratory.)
- Lorenz DaNapoli, Sipi's character, paints two portraits - of Jean and a teacher called Doctor Franzotti - to impress his rival Leonardo. The latter sees the paintings in the doctor's party and leaves agitated by his rival's skill (resolution vs. Rival, Imagination aspect). The celebrating Lorenz hikes up to the courtesan Rebecca, and strives to impress her with his skills in an effort to get her to model for him (resolution against Victim, Voice). He fails, however, end of scene.

Aspects: One thing we all noticed and discussed at one point was that Imagination is much more useful narratively than the other Aspects. It's simply easier to include in the narration, and players ended up using it much more than the other Aspects. Voice came a close second in the first half of the session simply because I allowed it's use as a catch-all "social" Aspect (contrary to your advice in IRC, if you remember, Paul) whenever characters tried to talk people to do something. But when playing as written, any and all sorcery belongs to Imagination alongside artistic endeavours, so it's pretty easy to change anything to it if you want; just invent a suitably colorful spell to do it. It's not necessarily a problem (after all, other Aspects can be stretched as well), but it was pronounced enough for the players to remark on how Flesh and Imagination were only ever used if they made a point of it.

Fetishizing: worked well, here's Jeanne's fetish progression as a sample:
- She is unmarried, devoted to her scholarship.
- She has tattoos of Greek phrases on her skin.
- She punctured her own eye when becoming a Scourge.
- Doctor Franzotti used to regularly rape her during her initial studies.

NPC elements: The players were not impressed by the trait system of Nobodies and Victims. We tended to forget to add traits, it happened as an afterthought. Replacing traits with a simple importance score was suggested as a more rational method. Personizing and derogation felt tagged-on, and questions garnered little interest, despite our consicious effort to take them as narrative flags (I'd described the game previously by suggesting that PCs are in antagonistic position, and protagonism, if any, should fall on the NPCs.); one major reason was that there is no rules support for actually developing the character's question in any way before you meet the personalizing criteria; another reason was that there is no particular systematic motivation for the players to be interested in NPCs and their questions, as ending the game is exactly not on their list of things to do.

Narrative content: This is a big deal, and the focus of our discussion after the playtest. Sami characterized the game as "Acts of Wisdom", and both players agreed that the protagonism was definitely centered on the PCs, and the NPCs garnered only little sympathy, despite the aggressive demeanor of the PCs. Theories as to why ranged everywhere, but one common idea was that especially Victims are too passive and not laden with interesting potential, because they cannot progress anywhere in mechanical terms, and were depicted as pretty passive in the game. Removing the class of Victims (replacing with Nobodies) was suggested, as well as GMing advice amounting to "whenever a Victim is framed into a scene, explicitly narrate how their life is a little better since the last time they got stomped by a PC."

Fun: Not really relevant for testing purposes, but I should encourage the development by mentioning that we had lots of fun with the game despite the various critiques. So fundamentally it's sound.

I can write down more exact accounts of turn content, rolls made and such later, if it's needed. But now I got to run, let's return to this at some point.