A few weeks ago... three weeks ago I think, I played two sessions of The Mountain Witch with three of my non-gamer friends. The first was Becky, who was like, "You wrote a book? I'll buy it!" and has been bugging me to run a game for a while. She has, to my knowledge, never played an RPG before.

The second was my sister, Tabitha, who played DnD with me when we were, like, 8 & 9 years old or something. She has also played my 20-minute demo of tMW.

The last was Kevin, my other sister's husband. Kevin has limited experience with role-playing, I'm not sure, either DnD or WoD or Vampire. He does, however, do alot of theater work, so he has no problem improvising and taking on characters.

Even though we played for two sessions, we only played for like 2.5 or 3 hours, for a total of two chapters. We ended up meeting after got people finished working, and we had my nephew running around vying for our attention, so the sessions weren't as focused as my normal role-playing group sessions are. But they were still good for the limited time we actually played.

The game had a very joke-y atmosphere, but I was impressed with the players' thematic choices. Kevin was the most joke-y (which fits his personality), really getting into a sorta, um, "action movie" mood. Tabitha was the most about getting down to business, like, "which task has to done now?" She was also the most, um, moral, always trying to do the "right" thing. Becky was a tad shy at first, trying to figure out what she was suppose to be doing; but by the second session she was in the groove of things.

I started things with my "you find a bunch of killed samurai on the path and a mysteriously unhurt samurai in the woods." Here was a great example of the "joke-y but thematically interesting"-play. They found the unhurt samurai in the woods, who was screaming, "You won't kill me like you did my friends!" Tabitha was trying to talk with him when Kevin said in a joke-y tone, "I don't believe him, I'm goin' to cut off his leg and killl 'im!"

I was thinking, "Whoa!... Cold!... Awesome!" But the others were kinda like, "How can you do that?!?" in a shocked tone. Kevin was like, "I'm only joking around." (Though I double-checked he actually wanted to do it, and he confirmed that he did.) I was afraid the other's comments were going to have a chilling effect on Kevin, so I tried to affirm that I liked his choice. I'm not sure the effect of my comments.

After that scene, I led the group to a old man who lived alone in a haunted house under the illusion that he was milling wheat or rice or something. He was delusional, but happy. Kevin didn't trust him, so he left and slept outside. But the girls were like, "he's nice, we're staying." Even after I affirmed that the house was ghostly (from the outside, Kevin could see the house disappear in the moonlight), the girls didn't care, they stayed with the man.

The next chapter the group made their way up the mountain. They found a cave with evidence of an ogre, a kijo. They then heard a person scream. Tabitha was like, "We have to save them!" but Becky was like, "No, I'm staying here."

What happened next was the highlights of the game. I had a female spirit approach Becky's character---a male ronin---while the others were away. Becky and Kevin were joking like, "I wanna do her!" when Becky said, "no, I REALLY am going to try and seduce her." The others must have thought this shocked me (as they said later), but I was like, "I have no problem with that." But I wanted to roll to see if the ghost could charm Becky's character. We rolled, and Becky got a partial success---the ghost would love her character but be a jaded lover, unable to let go! Could I have planned that better?!?

Later, the ghost approached Tabitha (jealous of another female around her man), and said, "[Becky's character] has given himself to me, he just doesn't know it." I was just thinking along the whole jaded-lover-won't-let-go thing, but Tabitha and Kevin were like, "Whoa! She's having your baby!" I was thinking, "That's an awesome idea, she is now!"

Unfortunately we didn't make much farther. My time was constrained so we didn't get to finish the game. This experience jives with a number of other games I've had with non-gamers. They tend to make interesting choices all on their own, without thinking about it. I wonder, however, how they would fair without someone like me who consciously looks for these thematic trends and points the game to press the issues?

Someone who is interested in directing/steering the game toward themes, do you mean?

That is a bit of an issue - identifying themes and opportunities for steering the game into them is a skill. It's not something everyone just has (the other players are key examples, even as they give off thematic ideas, there is no move to knit them together).

Could game mechanics help teach this skill? Capes basically teaches players to hunt down character weaknesses for points.