I GMed “One Can Have Her” yesterday for two friends, M and P. Going in, their indie game experience was limited to a single DITV game I ran for them a couple of weeks back. They’ve played quite a lot of the usual stuff, though.

I’d read the rules the previous day, and we went over them together quickly before playing. I’d seen “The Third Man”, and M had seen “The Maltese Falcon”. P didn’t really know much about Film Noir.

Everyone enjoyed the idea of playing in black and white. We decided to go with the default setting of 1950 LA.

Char-gen went very fast. Everyone liked the fact that they had to choose from a set list of options. The protagonists were:
- Joe Barcroft (played by P):
o Nervous insurance agent
o Pulled insurance fraud on a celebrity
o Knows the femme fatale through her father
o Wants peace of mind
- Hank Parker (played by M):
o Depressed night-club singer
o Murdered a friend
o Dated the femme fatale’s mother
o Wants forgiveness

(Later in the game, P told us he’d actually been an insurance agent in real life at one point :) )

The players quickly suggested, half-jokingly, that Hank could be Joe’s victim, and that the crime had ruined his career as a singer. They also suggested that Joe knew the femme fatale’s father because he’d sold him insurance.

We picked a name for the femme fatale: Kathie Morton. Then it was time for me to prep. I have to admit I wasn’t too confident at that point. My experience with R-maps etc. is still only a few months old. I put P and M in front of “The Third Man”, to get them in the mood, while I went to prep in my apartment’s other room.

I put Joe, Hank, Kathie, her father (“Crane”) and her mother (unnamed… I thought it’d be thematically appropriate if all women in the story were unnamed, save for Kathie Morton) on the R-map. Then I needed Joe and Hank’s victims. I decided to go with the players’ idea of making Hank Joe’s victim, after checking with them that they didn’t mind. I made Hank’s murdered friend a separate person (Kasper Luck).

Now, I had to work the characters’ dreams and enemies into it. Joe wanted peace of mind. So I made “Crane” Hank’s ex-manager, who would never let Joe forget that he cost him so much money. Next, I gave Kasper a son, who knew Hank killed his father, but didn’t have any material proof, and who wasn’t going to forgive him any time soon.

NPC recap:
- Kathie Morton: the femme fatale
- “Crane”: Kathie father; Hank’s ex-manager; Joe’s enemy
- unnamed: Kathie’s mother; Hank used to be her “back-door man”
- Kasper Luck: Hank’s friend and victim (dead)
- Barton Luck: Kasper’s son; Hank’s enemy

Before I went back into the playing room, I needed to figure out what Kathie wanted. Here are the ideas I came up with:
- get rid of a bothersome mobster/boyfriend;
- rob a bank;
- get some forged papers (perhaps a passport).

I also needed to think of ways she could help the protagonists reach their goals:
- have her father’s revenge attempts fail;
- charm Barton into forgiveness.
Going into play, I felt this wasn’t going to be enough…

Anyway. Now we were all set to go. I figured I’d follow the game’s advice and have Kathie offer the protagonists to help them reach their life goals, but asking them for something in return, and have this happen early in the game. I was open about this with the players. As it happened, the players didn’t have any ideas for opening scenes, so that’s what we started with.

Here’s a rundown of the game’s scenes.

1/ We establish Kathie has some contacts with the mob. Joe asks Kathie over to his office. He asks her if she could introduce him to someone who could arrange for him to “die” and disappear. She agrees, if he can help her retrieve her passport, which is locked up in a vault in a mobster’s house. They strike a deal.

NPC: Eddie Novello, mob boss.

2/ Hank walks out of the shadows next to Kathie Morton, as she’s walking home. He asks her for money, which he wants to give to Kasper’s widow and son, to help them forgive him. Kathie tells him she doesn’t have the money, but that she knows where he can get some. Bruno Essler owns the Oyster night-club. Kathie and him are lovers, but she wants out, and he won’t let her. She knows when Bruno takes the club’s winnings to the mob, and the route he uses. If Hank can ambush him, he can have the money, as long as he makes sure Bruno’s dead. Hank says he’ll think about it.
Some dialogue:
- Hank: “You want me to kill a man?”
- Kathie: “I know you can…”
Classic :)

NPC: Bruno Essler, night-club owner

At this point, I established that Bruno Essler had gotten a feeling that Kathie was going to quit him, and probably quit LA, so he’d asked Eddie Novello to steal her passport and keep it safe.

3/ First conflict. Joe scams his way into Novello’s luxurious house, and retrieves the passport, with Kathie help (she wasn’t supposed to be there in the beginning, but she showed up since P played a queen).

4/ Conflict. Hank ambushes Bruno, ramming his car with a truck. He takes the briefcase full of bills, and puts a bullet in Bruno’s forehead.

5/ Joe puts Kathie’s passport in a deposit-box in the railway-station.

6/ Conflict. Hank convinces Kasper’s widow to take the money. We made it clear this didn’t mean Barton forgave him for killing his father.

7/ Confilct. Joe has a forger make a copy of the passport, and convinces Kathie it’s the real thing. Kathie is shaken by Bruno’s death, and Joe comforts her (if you know what I mean).

8/ Conflict. Inspector Malone shows up at Hank’s place. He tells him Kathie is a suspect in Bruno Essler’s murder, and asks him why she used him as an alibi. M actually lost this conflict, so I narrated how Barton Luck had bribed Malone to nail Hank. Malone cuffs Hank and drags him off to the police-station.

9/ Kathie tells Joe she’s arranged a meeting with Novello. She won’t be there herself, for obvious reasons.

10/ Conflict. Hank convinces Kathie to charm Barton (no actual forgiveness yet, but the intent to manipulate Barton was clearly stated). This conflict saw our first cross-play. P helped M, and explained how Kathie felt sorry for Hank. Had P not cross-played, I’d have won that conflict.

11/ Joe sits down with Novello.

12/ Conflict. Malone tortures Hank in the station’s basement, and makes him admit Kathie ordered Bruno Essler’s murder. I win by playing a king. Barton shows up and helps Malone beat the shit out of Hank.

13/ Conflict. Another defeat for the players. Joe asks Novello to help him disappear. P was losing, so M cross-plays his last card anyway: a king. Novello agrees, but intends to double-cross Joe and really kill him, because “Crane” got to him first and asked him to off Joe.

Both players are out of cards, so it was time to see who was going to rat! I knew the players expected me to go for another round. But it was already close to 6PM, and I wanted to squeeze in a game of Contenders. So I picked a red card.

Papers were revealed, and surprise! Hank sells Joe to the cops, while Joe keeps his mouth shut! So Joe ends his life in jail. Hank is forgiven by Barton, who punched his hatred away in the police basement. But wait: M decides Kathie deserves to go down for making Hank kill another man, and narrates how she gets caught by the cops, and fries for murder! What a thankless, heartless thing to do :)

So… We had a great time playing this little game. I recommend it, especially for when you only have a couple of hours at your disposal.

Here are some post-play thoughts…

The most important thing for the GM is to come up with what the femme fatale wants, and what she can do to help the protagonists reach their goals.

The R-map can be created openly, with the players.

Conflicts are over very quickly, especially with two players, making big bad stakes totally appropriate. You don’t get the back and forth like in DITV, but it does make for a very focused story, with short, intense scenes. I like that (even though I also like DITV’s back and forth), but YMMV.

I’d like to try this game with three or four players (besides the GM) to see how that changes the card-flow.

And here are a few rules questions…

Is there a specific time when players start to flesh out the who/what/when of the crimes/victims/ties they picked for their characters? After char-gen but before play? Strictly during play?

Can a PC be another PC’s victim? It worked out fine for us, but I’m not sure this is what is intended in the game.

Can you narrate the cops into a scene, even when no jack is played? Same question for the femme fatale and queens.

Questions, comments, and of course answers are very welcome!

Hello JC,

Thank you for playing and for writing this report. It sounds like you had a good game, full of film noir goodness. I grinned when I read the “You want me to kill a man?” dialog.

I like how you put the players in front of The Third Man while you were prepping the non-player characters. I'm curious, how much time did you spend on prepping on your own? I want it to be quick and easy and provide the right tools for the game master. That thing on figuring out how the femme fatale can help the player characters was one of the things added after Ron's playtest, as it's something I do myself but hadn't considered actually adding to the game. That's the value of other people playtesting for you.

I recognize the part with the opening scenes, and how the players didn't have any clear suggestions of their own. The player characters are vague at the start of the game and, as a player, it's hard to know where to start. Your idea of having opening scenes with the femme fatale sounds great, as it settles early on that she's an important part of what's going on. Another option is to have the enemies present in the first scene to put pressure on the player character, or have something about the crime surface that demands immediate action.

So that answers one of your questions: you can certainly have the police, femme fatale or enemies in scenes without the proper cards being played. Playing face cards just means that they settle conflicts more quickly, and that you won't have a game without the femme fatale or enemies showing up at all. Sooner or later someone plays a face card, and then they enter story, if they haven't before. I enjoy playing the enemies so much I sometimes forget to introduce the femme fatale, but she always gets involved anyway.

There's no fixed point when the players are supposed to flesh out their characters, but I want to avoid "playing before playing". What I mean is I don't want the group to spend an hour mapping out how everyone's connected and exactly what everyone has done to who. A sentence or two of clarification to each selection from the lists is enough. "The victims of the murder were his parents, because he needed the inheritance money" is enough before the game starts, then anyone can introduce facts about the murder, like it was arson, that the player character was helped by someone else, or that there's a witness. I haven't used a player character as a victim in my own games, but it should work perfectly. It sets up a nice situation where both player characters have all the more reasons to rat, and if they don't it really tells you something. In your game Hank, the victim of Joe's crime, got his revenge when he ratted on Joe to the police while Joe didn't. Pretty heavy stuff.

Your post-game observations are spot on. I like how you "tricked" the players with a short game; that's totally appropriate and what the game master is supposed to do and one of the things that keep rattings interesting. I've only played one-session games myself, but I really want to try to show a final black card sometime and continue the session next time with things in full swing. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the pace with a cliffhanger like that.

Your player M passed a hard judgment on Kathie. It's one of the benefits of being the only player with a character left in the game, and one that should be used to wrap up the femme fatale's story the way you want. It sounds like M did just that. What's interesting is that M could just as likely have set up some weird love triangle with Hank, Kathie and her mother, or made her get away from it all to find happiness somewhere else. When I game master I like it when players get the chance to tell what happens to the femme fatale, as it's more rewarding to get a glimpse into the player's head than to settle what happens to a non-player character.

Do you think you could clarify your step 13 ("Joe asks Novello to help him disappear. P was losing, so M cross-plays his last card anyway: a king." followed by "Both players are out of cards") a bit? A player is only allowed to cross-play a king if a king was just played AND if the conflict isn't yet resolved. For M to cross-play the king either you or P had played a king, but needed one more to resolve the conflict. Was this what happened? Also, when players cross-play they immediately get to draw a new card, so M should have one conflict left after cross-playing. It's not terribly important, at least not in this case as it seems like it worked out fine for you, but since you want to play again I want to help you with the rules in any way I can.

Thanks again for a great play report!

- Jonas

Jonas wrote:
I like how you put the players in front of The Third Man while you were prepping the non-player characters. I'm curious, how much time did you spend on prepping on your own? I want it to be quick and easy and provide the right tools for the game master.

Jonas wrote:
Do you think you could clarify your step 13 ("Joe asks Novello to help him disappear. P was losing, so M cross-plays his last card anyway: a king." followed by "Both players are out of cards") a bit? A player is only allowed to cross-play a king if a king was just played AND if the conflict isn't yet resolved. For M to cross-play the king either you or P had played a king, but needed one more to resolve the conflict. Was this what happened? Also, when players cross-play they immediately get to draw a new card, so M should have one conflict left after cross-playing. It's not terribly important, at least not in this case as it seems like it worked out fine for you, but since you want to play again I want to help you with the rules in any way I can.

When I GMed our evening of play, I also required only about 15 minutes.

Best, Ron