Hey there,

On Monday I did a full playtest of the final version of Shooting the Moon. My friends Laura & David agreed to help me out. David coming from a dyed in the wool D&D background, and Laura having played a variety of systems (White Wolf, Over the Edge, Traveller etc.), but neither of them really having played an indie game yet. They were into the premise of Shooting the Moon, a love triangle between three characters: two suitors pursuing a shared beloved.

Pagan Rites
We had all just returned from a big pagan festival, Starwood, and to celebrate the afterglow, we set the story there.  The Beloved was given 6 attributes that are highly prized in this environment: beatiful, spiritual, open-hearted, a drummer, a dancer, and honest. Laura played her, and she turned out to be a young girl named Hawthorne.  The reason she was available was that she had just turned 18, (newly non-jailbait for the Suitors). Her dream was to find romance, but the obstacle in her way was her overly protective dad, an elder of the community who went by the name of Odin.

Characters
We created attributes for the Suitors by making up pairs of synonyms and antonyms for three of the Beloved's attributes:  for honest we had blunt and crafty, for spiritual: religious and discordian, for open-hearted: intuitive and dispassionate.

Running with this norse theme, I played the first suitor: an old-hand at the festival who went by the name of Loki.  We made him 28 so as to avoid issues of moral reprehensibility, and the synonyms and antonyms of Hawthorne's attributes that Loki got assigned put together a familiar profile: Discordian, dispassionate and crafty. My friends were merciful and when these attributes were modified, with another trait he became more human: discordian but conscious, crafty but open-handed (giving), dispassionate but caring.

The other Suitor, Chantel,  got another set of traits that pointed toward another likely type: religious, blunt and intuitive.  David saw her as a new attendee of the festival who was Catholic but had been deeply questioning her faith.  He gave her a missing hand (!!) which was an important aspect of the character, but never got put into the mechanical traits. Had I to do it again, it would have been in there. As it is, it was an incredible source of drama and non-saccharine pathos.  She was younger, about 20 years old.

Where, What and other Whos
The Suitors were also given a person, place and thing associated with them to help flesh out the world.  The roundhouse (site of an all night fire circle with drums and dancing), the snuggle dome (yeah, just what you'd think--these are real places, aren't you wishing you'd gone too, now?), a rival druidess out for Loki, Chantel's priest who was at the festival, an athame and a middle eastern drum.  These locations became key aspects of the plot.  The suitors snuggled and danced it up against one another, pulling Hawthorne this way and that.  The drum was always in use, the athame never, and the druidess and priest only came into play once, but it was critical, especially the priest. Each had a conflict, too: jaded for Loki, and her faith for Chantel.

The Chase
The game played out over the course of the festival.  It began with Loki teaching Hawthorne to drum and both getting pulled into a compassionate lesson with Chantel too, figuring out together how she could keep time with her injured arm.  From there they got swept up in a Maenad ritual--frenzied dancing that brought them afoul of Odin, Hawthorne's dad and landed her in the keeping of a chaperone, the attentive (and not so smart) Thor.  Hawthorne sneaked out after a friend distracted Thor, and spent an ecstatic night dancing to the rhythms masterfully played by Loki, and then lead Chantel in the dance, though in the final analysis, Hawthorne missed that Chantel was flirting with her, and became captivated by Loki and his playing. 

How to
Each player alternates taking a turn.  First Suitor 1 works together with the Beloved's player, and has to deal with a hurdle created by the player of Suitor 2.  Then Suitor 2 is in the spotlight with the Beloved, and then the Beloved's player brings on the adversity for both of the other players to deal with.  When you are the Beloved's player, you get to choose how high the stakes are for your turn: for her first turn, Laura turned it all the way up, posing a threat that opposed both the Suitors and her own character.  In each turn, the players are trying to gain points toward their overall goal: either a connection with the Beloved, or--for the Beloved--its dream and aspiration.  For Beloved turns, each level of threat gives you the chance of gaining up to three points towards the goal. 

This did raise an issue for me though that I think I will change.  We had the first Beloved's turn be worth three, the second two, the last was one.  It gave my character, who won the first one, a lead from the start that I felt was a bit dis-spiriting for the others.  It seems like either it should be 3 each time, or ramping up rather than down (1-2-3) to give it the proper feeling of escalation and suspense about victory. In the two player version, it is simply 1-2-3. I think I will change that here too.

The players poured on the romantic manipulations. Hawthorne was alternatively serenaded and egged on by the jaded Loki, and called upon to help and guide the innocent Chantel.  Laura was kept on the hop, working with and against the others.  We made some major additions to each others' characters: David gave Hawthorne "lesbian tendencies" to aid Chantel's quest. And he used the "inexperienced" and "persuasive" given to him by Laura and me to very good effect to get Hawthorne's sympathies and attention. 

The Suitor players call upon their traits in various ways to gain dice to roll against the other Suitor or the Beloved, and in one key exchange I got to sacrifice on of my traits: I crossed it off and replaced it with a deeply contrasting trait. In this case, my character was jaded old "seen it all, been there, done that" kind of guy who prized himself on making the snide comment and treating others' wonder with contempt.  But when he played his heart out for Chantel and Hawthorne, both glowing in their beauty of youth, and even that this was the little Hawthorne he'd seen grown up, full of the beauty of woman-hood, his little heart was touched and tears came to his eyes. Loki lost "dispassionate" and got "touched" instead. 

David did something similar in the climactic scene at the end of the game. The final Beloved's turn, set at the final ritual: a 2 story tall bonfire with over a thousand people dancing around it.  Chantel comes out with a huge retinue, clothed in glory and reaching out to Hawthorne, and as she extolls her love for Hawthorne, she sheds the religion of her birth that she doubted but has haunted her and embraced the new pagan faith she had found.  5 dice to David, for crossing off "unbelieving" and replaced it with "pagan".  But though he rolled many dice, and won the exchange, it was not enough to win the day, and the sight of her priest at the circle sent her running off, leaving Hawthorne to dance until dawn with Loki. 

Reflections
The problem of three people in the game seems pretty much fixed now. It has no traditional gm, so when first designing the game, making it work for two players was not terribly hard, but getting the balance right for three players was very tricky. An important aspect of the game is encouraging and supporting all of the players in creating meaningful challenge for one another. But how to keep the third player involved in that dynamic without simply giving it over to them entirely?  By giving each player the responsibility for the adversity in turn (as Remi and crew suggested), and giving the Beloved a goal that they need help to achieve, and shared dice pools between the Beloved and the Suitors keeps everyone truly in the mix and engaged with one another's character. 

The tango was a source of inspiration: each pair works together in turn, with the other throwing a monkey wrench in the works of the others when they are odd man out.  It is rife with pulls and bribery--with everyone getting benefits from taking on complications to their characters, and accepting "interesting" new traits from their opponent or ally.  And in the end, that unfolding of the characters in directions unthought of and unlooked for because you've opened it up to so much input from the others, makes it a really different kind of ride.

My thanks Laura & David!

best,
Emily

Sounds awesome, Emily. Of course, after Breaking the Ice, I expect and require all Black and Green games to rock. And that's your fault for making such a great game. Seems like you've got another one coming.

Out of curiousity, how long did the session run? Also, were there any pre-existing romantic relationships among the players, either current or past?

It sounds like you have made some substantial positive changes since our NC playtest!

'lo,

I'll try to keep the standards at the highest, Andrew, thank you!!  Let's see, we started around 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and finished up by before 4.  So the playing time is pretty much like Breaking the Ice.  Each player just takes two turns, so it goes quick.  That part had a nice flow--it felt natural to move from focusing on one of the Suitor's interactions with the Beloved and on to the next. 

Also, were there any pre-existing romantic relationships among the players, either current or past?

Well you know I'm game, Emily!  Send me more info.

Sounds great. See you next week.