Stitch – Spodley Grange playtest

Master: Iain McAllister
Team:
Gregory Malkovich, Soldier - James
Alex Stepovich, Engineer - Janos
John Parish, Soldier - Claire
Alexander Khruschev, commander - Andrew

Overview:
Stitch is a game that I wrote for Game Chef 2007 and though it didn’t win, I am still very proud of what I managed to do in such a short space of time. I used the spodley event to give it its first playtest and was very happy with the way things turned out.

There is a problem with this AP, and I know that even before I write it. Stitch is a game based on causing the players to experience a sensation of stress and pressure. To do this is uses a system based on the amount of time passed in the individual events the team travels to. This is impossible to convey in an AP but I will try and relate how everyone reacted to it.

Report:
I sat down to this playtest feeling nervous and apprehensive. This was mainly due to the fact that it had not been playtested by anyone outside my own head since Game Chef and that I hadn’t even looked at it since then.

We took it slowly, partly so I could re-familiarise myself with the logic behind my design. Each player takes on the role of a Stitch team member and as such has a set of 3 skills ranked at 5,10 and 15. They also have 3 responsibilities ranked the same way. Last but not least they take a belief package with 3 beliefs ranked in the same way.

In total the character creation took about 15 mins which I was really pleased with.

I then set to explain the mechanics which is where I started to build the tension. When you enter a knot, a collection of events, you get 30 mins before you ‘quantum leap’ out of it again. When you want to do something the Master can call for a test which means you compare your skill against the minute value. Higher means you pass, lower means you fail. Beliefs and responsibilities are brought in back and forth by player and Master to raise and lower the skil value, all the while the clock is ticking. Argument just causes you to fail!

I explained all this to the players making clear, several times, that I would not, unless someone was actual dying, stop the clock.

The players then set about planning their jump. We were just going to do one event to test if things work. They played off the sketchy nuclear Armageddon described in the book and the first Knot consisted of the following events:

Physicist who creates the nuclear quantum bomb is born
They decide to do some crazy baby swapping at the hospital where he is born.

China enters trade negotiations with America after expanding to be the biggest economic power
Planting some false evidence about secret CIA operations by giving it to one of the translators for the Chinese delegation.

Future Russian leader Nikolay Sergeyev graduates from Princeton
They go back and change his records so that he fails and doesn’t graduate.

Once they had planned the mission, I sketched out a few things to throw in their way and then hovered my finger over the button of the timer. There was a genuine sense of tension round the table before I hit the button which was fantastic. I then counted them down…..5….4…..3…..2…..1….launch.

They pelted out of their ship and into the university, heading for the records department. Dealing easily with a couple of security guards along the way they set their engineer to falsifying records. After dealing with a couple of more security guard problems they made their way back to the ship and jumped to the hospital.

Their was a definite sigh of relief and then they were into the next event. The GM has to be a bit of a bastard in this game, providing a lot of problems. They arrived at the hospital to find it was under quarantine. Putting on their hazmat suits they made their way in, almost falling at the first hurdle as paramedics insisted on seeing their ID. Moving down through the hospital they made their way to the maternity ward and found the child.

Making their way out of the building they found themselves amongst panic and the police. Quickly swapping the child’s name tags the team made their way back to the ship and jumped to the next event. This was going to be the hard one as about 15 minutes had now passed.

They jumped to a point where they could speak to the interpreter alone pushed the evidence into his hands after much persuasion and jumped.

What was great
Throughout the event everyone was crouched over the table, panicked and speaking quickly. It was fantastic. The system really gave a feeling of stress and panic.

The system worked very well for a first time out.

What didn’t work
I had a mechanic whereby people got hindrances and benefits for failing and succeeding at a given task. This could not be more unnecessary.

I had to make notes on what each player’s beliefs and responsibilities were so I could throw them out but had no in game facility to do that i.e. no sheet provided.

Some belief packages are just crap and need changed. Something along the lines of one positive, one negative and one neutral.

What needs added
A list of common actions and the time they will take. Something like 30, 1 min, 1:30 and 2 min actions. Anything else can be assumed to take as long as it takes to describe.

Advice on the Gm for how many problems to throw in the face of the players per event. Advice on how to build tension. Expansion of the time travel info and make it look more like a document.

What equipment the team had came up a couple of times so that needs addressed.

Review:
All in all the game went really well and I was delighted how stressed I had managed to get the players feeling over their mission. They actually felt relieved at the end but enjoyed how the tension had been racked up as the game progressed. This game is going to see light of day, and I am looking forward to running it again in the not too distant future.

That sounds good. I wish I'd played.

I imagine you're right that you need advice on building tension. I would think you, personally, are very good at it, doing lots of things with your tone of voice, pace of delivery, etc. It's going to be a challenge to document all of that so that another GM can do it.

Have you any initial thoughts on how many problems a GM should throw at the players? It's a fine balance: too few and there's no tension, too many and the GM looks wilfully obstructive. I'm almost tempted to suggest some form of GM currency, just so it's clear that the GM isn't introducing obstacles just to be a bastard (that's not quite the right solution, probably, but perhaps something like that).

I notice, from reading the rules, that the Master can bring beliefs to make players fail at tests (e.g. "I am not qualified for this mission"). How did this work in play? I can imagine it might a bit arbitary, a bit frustrating to the players. Do you need guidance on how much of a bastard to be when bringing beliefs in which will make the players fail?

Graham

Nice to see you still working on the game.

Good "driving instructions" for the GM will be a must here, indeed.

Also, I think you should consider how much of the tension was actually generated by your GM-ing, and how much by the time limit being in place. Cause, it might just as well turn out that the time limit wasn't all that important - if so, it will probably become apparent after more playtests, especially those run by different people. I suppose it might be good if you observe this closely during further playtesting, as depending on the actual importance of the time limit you might want to approach it differently and readjust the system accordingly.

As for beliefs and responsibilities, I think instead of a sheet, representing them with some physical objects could work well. Tokens manipulated around the table or something could make things smooth and instantly clear, while checking out the sheets and scribbling on them would take time and possibly distract players. Actually, it could be interesting if everything on the character sheet was represented by tokens, or maybe cards (cards can be flipped, to visibly represent current state of something). This could be a way to easily and smoothly handle hindrances and benefits, too.

Graham wrote:
Have you any initial thoughts on how many problems a GM should throw at the players? It's a fine balance: too few and there's no tension, too many and the GM looks wilfully obstructive. I'm almost tempted to suggest some form of GM currency, just so it's clear that the GM isn't introducing obstacles just to be a bastard (that's not quite the right solution, probably, but perhaps something like that).

Graham wrote:
I notice, from reading the rules, that the Master can bring beliefs to make players fail at tests (e.g. "I am not qualified for this mission"). How did this work in play? I can imagine it might a bit arbitary, a bit frustrating to the players. Do you need guidance on how much of a bastard to be when bringing beliefs in which will make the players fail?

Filip wrote:
Also, I think you should consider how much of the tension was actually generated by your GM-ing, and how much by the time limit being in place. Cause, it might just as well turn out that the time limit wasn't all that important - if so, it will probably become apparent after more playtests, especially those run by different people. I suppose it might be good if you observe this closely during further playtesting, as depending on the actual importance of the time limit you might want to approach it differently and readjust the system accordingly.

Filip wrote:
As for beliefs and responsibilities, I think instead of a sheet, representing them with some physical objects could work well. Tokens manipulated around the table or something could make things smooth and instantly clear, while checking out the sheets and scribbling on them would take time and possibly distract players. Actually, it could be interesting if everything on the character sheet was represented by tokens, or maybe cards (cards can be flipped, to visibly represent current state of something). This could be a way to easily and smoothly handle hindrances and benefits, too.

iain wrote:
It did work fine in play and there was no argument from the players when I brought something in, but there is definite need for advice on how much of bastard to be. The GM needs to be an adversary for the players but needs to watch stopping their efforts completely. This will need carefully written i.e. its going to be tricky!

Hmm, what if there was a "script" that told you that yes, if it's 28th minute and nothing other is happening you should do something bastardly and obstructive just now? Not the specifics of what to do, but rather a signal "throw in something now, if there is enough place"

You could have a number of pre-determined "matrixes of trouble" and draw or choose one from a pile for each knot, or this could be created or randomly generated by the GM, before the mission.

I think the idea of a script is way too rideged. I will send you a new version of the game once it is done with the Gm advice added in. Currently working on how to make the time travel more accurate and interesting to read.

Cheers

Iain