I'm thinking this one will be useful as the playtest was a total crash and burn, but I get ahead of myself.

For this session we had Tim and Len again who are my normal Friday night guys and playtesters. We all get along and have built some good trust. We also had Willow join us whom has only played one game with us the previous Friday. We got together and I explained to Willow that it was a game about becoming a Cthonic God which you do by stepping on other people to get there. She seemed pleased with the prospect of playing a game with PVP elements. She identifies herself as Gamist.

We then rolled for settings. Willow and Tim both rolled two dice and Len rolled zero dice. Willow and Tim both got absolute prime, and the lowest number of primes between the two of them was Tim's solitary prime. Both times I've been asked if they could just roll all the dice they wanted and Tim joked around picking up like 20 eight siders. I've said yes each time, but no one has tried that option, likely because I describe how they could get screwed if no one else rolls Absolute Prime.

Willow created a somewhat vague setting, 2099 Earth cyberpunk was the total of the description. We decided that it could be more fleshed out as we played. She may have also established it was Hong Kong?

Tim created a Sword and Sorcery MMORPG virtual world that is in our future yet to come called Children of the Dragon. I think he was grooving on some of his perceptions of Willows setting and perhaps unconsciously linking the two. This is an interesting line of thought for me as the other playtest Brett made his setting in a time where interaction with the setting Len made could possibly occur. I wonder if this is a natural tendency? My thought is it goes against the designs purpose and more info on the limits of setting creation are needed, as I was forced in both games to combat the players wanting to link the settings together, which may be a problem area without fiat.

Willow made: Julie Zhou
Flesh:2  Voice:3  Imagination:0  Memory:2  --- Ambition:3  Rage:0  Clarity:3 --- Power:0  Resistance:1 Denial:1
Her plans for temporal power? Become the CEO of the Chimera Corporation.

Len made: Yuri Blackheart
Flesh:1  Voice:2  Imagination:2  Memory:2  --- Ambition:4  Rage:0  Clarity:2 --- Power:0  Resistance:1  Denial:0
His plans for temporal power? To dominate the worlds financial markets.

Tim made: Roxxor McOwnage, a Bolder throwing giant who is an A.I.
Flesh:1  Voice:2  Imagination:2  Memory:2  --- Ambition:2 Rage:2 Clarity:2 --- Power: 0  Resistance:1  Denial:0
His plans for temporal power? To gain control over the game server and it's users. Tim also voluntarily explained his answer, he said he wanted to gain control over the game and the users so he could learn about the outside world.

Again there was a tie for clarity between Len and Tim, so I started with Len who was on my right. I'm not sure this is a big enough deal to need a mechanic, but a tiebreaker might make the process more clear. The questions were helpful Paul, and I felt better able to frame scenes, even with just this one flag. Len asked for a nobody. I started with Brad Dillion a banker whom had a meeting with Yuri. He was turning Yuri down for his loan, Len jumped on this, before I could even state that this could threaten his goal. We did some RP and he put some memories in Brad's head of what his future would be like if he helped Yuri. He then set up the next challenge himself and roleplayed using voice to force Brad to use his connections to set up a meeting with some VIP's. Len asked if he could do that as his next challenge. Since I can create nobodies at will, he had called the scene for nobodies, and it gave me a chance to have more pre-purposed nobodies I agreed. This has a strong hand I believe in the crashing and burning later, as you'll see. So we created Phillip Woo a higher representative in Brad Dillion's bank, Jo Puma an Industrialist, and Yen Black a politician. If I remember correctly Len went right to a challenge with voice I think and won. I don't remember the second challenge but I think he lost as the scene(s) ended here. Results: Len up three Power.

Next up is Tim. Tim asked for a nobody. I created Vlad Goldenshield a.k.a Brian Smith. Vlad was a maxed level character with good loot who was seeking an epic challenge. I started to have him say something and again the player jumped before I had to try to describe how they were being challenged. Tim described Roxxor as saying something and describing how it made Brad think, "Wait a sec, is this mob being played by someone?" Roxxor then true to nature threw a boulder at him. I found this interesting as you can see above Flesh is Roxxors weakest trait. Tim won. He then framed the next scene as something physical and we had a discussion because this didn't seem a efficient use of his abilities and I wanted to make sure he understood. He was thinking using an aspect was needed to increase it. After that was straightened out he described himself as making all Vlads cool lootz disappear and making them appear on Roxxor. This made me laugh, as a former MMO junkie I could feel Vlads pain. This is a point of feeling for the NPC for me, which is atypical as I tend to root for my players characters. Tim won. He then turned Vlad into a victim by making Brian make a deal to get his lootz back by agreeing to do what Roxxor tells him. He spent a point of Power to take away one of my dice to make this happen. That ended Tim's scene. Results: Tim up 1 power and 1 victim.

Next up is Willow. Willow asked for a nobody. I brought in Jo Puma from Len's scene and further defined him as the CEO of Chimera Corp. There were two conflicts I don't remember, as what happened after is much larger in my mind. Willow said, "I'm bored with this guy. I want someone else." I asked for some clarification and she stated she wanted a Rival. I explained I couldn't do that. She then said, "You let him change scenes." Him being Len. I explained that Len wanted to deal with more nobodies and since he asked for nobodies for his scene, and that I could create nobodies when I wanted that it wasn't the same situation. The guys had some input I don't remember. Willow asked for the book (I used openoffice to format the pages and made a cover sheet to put in a fancy binder with a window for the coversheet.), and paged through it while this discussion was going on. She wouldn't budge, and I didn't see how I could fairly budge with the rules, so I ended the game. We had some end game discussion, which Willow cut short by saying, "I don't want to talk about this anymore." Results: Game over. I won't be playtesting with Willow again.

Here's what I got up to then, I've lost all the context due to my frustration at the time taking notes. Tim and Len's scenes went well with what appeared to me both of them being more invested than last time and I was really looking forward to exploring Tim's A.I. leaving the virtual world.
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Can you add to another persons or use the same setting different?

Can you switch NPC types if so how do you do that? (I know we did this in the game you ran, but I don't remember seeing a rule for it)

Roles aren't well defined.

What do you do when you want to switch.

Links to story and exploration are missing.

What do players do during their downtime? (They stressed downtime)

Also Tim wanted me to mention he can't see the forum. If I know Tim he will have a more moderate interpretation of the experience which I'd be really interested in reading.

Len mentioned he was fairly confident that he would have been a Scourge again on his next turn.

Since the game I've been wondering how you see the followup challenges going and how the handing over of narration should go. After the player wins they get narration power correct? Do they have the responsibility to set up the next challenge? Is that my responsibility, or is either option fine? I think there should be something explaining the process.

Hey Clyde,

Apologies for the delayed response. And yes, crash and burns are excellent playtest feedback. Thanks.

Two points of note:

1. The Acts of Evil resolution mechanics do not apportion narration rights. After a dice roll, The GM and the occultist player should look to the result of the die roll for guidance in roleplaying the outcome. Essentially, the dice determine a creative constraint for an outcome that's created collaboratively.
2. Regarding your dispute with Willow, the rule is that the first roll of a player's scene must be against the NPC type chosen by the player. But the GM and player are free to introduce other characters to the scene as part of playing out the outcome of a dice roll. And in fact you did have an available Rival for Willow's scene if you wanted one: Yuri. Might have made for a nice test of the player vs. player mechanics.

But yes, both of these two points should be clearer in the text.

Thanks again,

Paul

Hi Paul,

No worries. I'm patient. So who has narration control in the event of some dispute? That's unclear to me. Also the rules as written now say specifically, from the how to play section, "The GM can invent Teachers and Nobodies at will in framing scenes. Underlings, Rivals, and Victims must have been created previously, from Teachers and Nobodies via the Status Change mechanics." This is what caused my reluctance to change the scene.

Hi guys.  This forum appeared for me today, so I'm here.

I don't have anything to add to the AP account, except to say I'm embarrassed about my silly character name.

Now, note that I have yet to read the rules for this game, so some of my preconceptions might be enirely off.

Clyde, I can't say I blame Willow for bringing the game to a premature end.  The rules for escalating with NPCs were not clearly explained to us (and I'm not saying you should have read all the rules to us before play) and I think she was justified in expressing some frustration with the system's imposed limitations.  This was no one's fault that I can see.  I also think you should reconsider inviting Willow to play tests.  You have to admit, she is good at attacking mechanics at their weakest point.  Which is why beating her will be that much more fun. :)

I was indeed trying to link our two settings, if tenuously.  This was a reaction to the prior play test session, where the characters never got to meet.  Perhaps deriviative settings should even be encouraged.

The discussion following the game focussed on our lack of empathy with the NPCs, especially those in the other characters' settings.  We also talked a bit about the "down time" while we waited for the other players to have their scenes.  I stand by my assertion that without a method to directly, constantly tie the players to the others' NPCs, that is an invitation for player disengagement.

But if it's any consolation, I will continue to portray the AI bent on hacking the "big server" the next time we play.

Awesome. I was definately interested in seeing how that worked out.

I'm not going to discuss Willow any further here as I don't want to be a hypocrite after the Story-games drama. I can give you a better explanation some other time if you like.