So yesterday I had some friends over and we had a quick playtest of Ordinary Angels, my game of angelic cops. Me and Fred talk about it quite extensively on my livejournal, here.

We were going to play it on saturday night but I suggested we watched the Prophecy to get in the right mood (for those who haven't seen it, it's Christopher Walken chewing up the scenery as a bad-ass Gabriel) but it proved to be such a big turn off we ended up playing something else. So sunday afternoon, with the Prophecy fading in our memory, we tried again.

Character Creation

Character creation was painless - distribute 11 points between the 3 stats and then pick a duty. We ended up with:

Leliel, the Sword of God, played by Geoff
Belief in Self 3
Belief in Man 2
Belief in the Word 6

Velon, the Angel of Mercy, played by Dave
Belief in Self 3
Belief in Man 5
Belief in the Word 3

Zagzagel, Protector of Children, played by Jan
Belief in Self 7
Belief in Man 2
Belief in the Word 2

Chapter Briefing

The game is split into chapters, chunks of the divine Plan assigned to a unit of angels, which serve to set the mechanical pace and purpose of a session. We setup the first chapter with the unit called into the office of their recalcitrant, desk-bound captain, Archas. He opened a case file, telling them that they were to complete the harvest of the soul of a girl, dying of cancer, who the angels tasked with watching over her had managed to lose.

Each chapter is mechanically divided up into Plan tokens, which represent progress towards solving the case and completing the Plan. Success during the session buys off these Plan tokens and the GM can use them to introduce adversity and complication. These tokens act as both a measure of pace and progress, as well as converting into experience at the end of a session. During the briefing the tokens (5 for each player) are split between 4 categories – adversaries (fighting), intervention (social), mysteries (investigating) and complications (a miscellaneous category for making things worse). By favoring one category over another at this stage the tone of the session can be changed.

I split the tokens evenly, narrating as I did so that the angel who had lost the girl was Zophiel (intervention), and that Ba-Ulgura, a demon, had designs not only on the girl but also her family (adversary). As Zophiel had lost the family, the captain did not know where to point them (mystery). At this point the players could butt in and define elements of the case too, but decided to go with what I’d defined up front.

Verse 1

The group started by going looking for Zophiel. Dave tossed me a point of faith to seize the narrative narrated finding Zophiel revelling in his doubt in a seedy bar. Doing so earnt him an intervention token from the plan. The others quickly got onboard, roughing Zophiel up and asking him where he saw the family last. Zophiel proved reluctant to help, knowing he was falling and unwilling to let the other angels claim credit for putting his mistake right. Leliel began to quote scripture at him, rallying him with reason and faith, and a promise of credit where credit was due. Geoff tested his Belief in the Word, getting 2 levels of success and the remainder of the intervention tokens. Zophiel pointed them to an address in Hell’s Gate and the intervention/talky side of the case was now over.

Verse 2

The unit headed to the address to find it empty, save for a teenage boy with track marks and scars up and down his arms, and empty eyes that had gazed into Hell itself – a demon. The angels and the demon snarled at one another for a bit, before provoking the demon to attack Leliel with tooth and nail. Leliel, quoting scripture and not missing a beat, spent a point of faith to manifest the Sword of God – a massive silver pistol that fired bullets that each had angels dancing on the head. In game terms this just provided a bonus die to his next roll, possibly a little weak.

In turn I spent one of the complication tokens to have a second demon drop from the ceiling and give myself a bonus to the roll. Leliel tested his Belief in Self, but tied with the demon, the conflict going unresolved. The demons fled and Leliel and Zagzagel split up to chase them, leaving Velon to search for clues.

Verse 3

Zagzagel tested Self to catch the demon, on the one hand succeeding, but rolling three 6s in the process. I knew this was especially bad, but hadn’t quite pinned down the mechanics yet. So it just proved to be an escalation of badness – Zag caught the demon, but as he did so Ba-Ulgara stepped out of the shadows, flick knives drawn as sharp as his toothy smile.

Verses 4-5

Leliel caught up with the other demon, only to be taunted about how even now his comrade was at the demon lord’s mercy. Meanwhile Velon discovered a new address, outside town, but I complicated matters with a mystery token, revealing some mysterious angelic script playing in the shadows in the corner of the room. The script suggested that God wished the entire family to be harvested, not just the terminally ill daughter. Velon bridled at this, keeping it to himself.

Verse 6

Elsewhere, Zag and Ba-Ulgara fought, Zag manifesting a flaming sword from the air itself. Zag won the conflict, removing another couple of adversary tokens, but not enough to defeat the demon. At this point Beliel narrated himself into the scene with a faith token. I described how Zagzagel and Ba-Ulgara were locked together, Zag’s sword burning into the demon’s side and Ba’s knife pushed up under the angel’s neck.

Verse 7

Ba-Ulgara taunted Leliel, asking him if his belief in his God was enough to save his friend. Leliel assured him it was and fired. Triple 6, but a success all the same. Ba-Ulgara was dead, but not before his knife had cut a deep groove into Zag’s face. Beliel was wrong, his belief was not enough and the scar on his friend would remind him of this. It became obvious what a triple 6 should do – it should increase the doubt of the angel, the measure of how close they are to doubting their beliefs and falling.

Verse 8

At this point there were only a couple of complication tokens left on the plan, so all that remained was the harvesting of the girl. The party drove out to the address Velon had found, a shack in the woods outside town. They split up and Velon found the girl’s father. Keeping the plan’s instructions to harvest the whole family to himself he rose up to his full height, manifested in all his glory and ordered the father to pack up his family and flee, leaving his eldest daughter behind. He passed his Belief in Man test and the family fled. One of Velon’s duties was “thou shalt show mercy, even to one whom the Plan decrees must be slain”, so he gained faith back for fulfilling that.

Verse 9

The unit closed the chapter by descending on the daughter in her sickbed, Zagzagel closing her eyes and reassuring her before harvesting her soul for the armies of heaven.

Epilogue: The Testament of Leliel

The game finished up with a testimony from Leliel, an in-game, “to camera” piece much like confessionals in InSpectres that are the only way to get rid of doubt. Me and Dave interviewed Leliel about his doubt, asking him why his belief had faltered. It proved to be a nice epilogue for the game.

What didn't work

So, the mechanics all held together, nothing seemed to falter in play and the players didn’t find anything overwhelming or cumbersome. All in all a good first playtest. But, there were a few issues that will require some work.

1. Duties – duties are the only means to regain faith tokens, but rarely cropped up in the game. Each duty is structured as 3 statements such as “thou shalt not allow harm to come to a child” or “thou shalt always show mercy” but it was commented that these might be too passive and vague. I think these need reworking so that they are more active in play. I’m looking for the feel of Keys with the style of the Ten Commandments, but keep coming up with vague, passive and overly broad instructions. Any suggestions as to how to improve them?

2. Pacing – the game lasted an hour, and we weren’t especially rushing. If the plan tokens are meant to act as pacing, they’re not doing a terrific job as 1 hour is way too short. I think the initial answer might be to simply use more tokens, maybe 10 per player. Thoughts?

3. Doubt – increasing your doubt score is meant to be a real temptation for the players, skipping the use of faith points and testing beliefs but getting closer to falling. However, the only time anyone took a point of doubt was when Geoff rolled triple 6. Currently doubt is just used instead of a faith point, which is handy when you’re out of faith but less so at other times – I wonder if it should be more powerful, to make it a real temptation? Or perhaps next session, with some of the players running low on faith it might crop up a bit more as a necessary evil. Does that sound like a fair assessment?

What did work

On the other hand, if I had to point at bits of the game that really sung in play, that I want to tap into and help bring into every game, it would be the point at which the demon and Zag were locked in combat, with Leliel's beliefs tested as to whether they were strong enough to save his friend. Also, Velon turning his back on the Plan to spare the rest of the family from being harvested. Those two moments captured, for me, what the game is all about.