Playtest report: Super Action Now! Rev 2/18/08 http://www.angelfire.com/indie/btw/SUPER_ACTION_NOW_3.htm

Buck, Clint, Stf - First Timers, all.

Okay, Marshall.  So, I read SAN!, that night I printed it off and started convincing others to get together - mind you, I know improvisers, but not storyteller/RPG gamers.  I also told anyone who will listen about the fine blend of improv and communal gaming (the fun part) that SAN! goes after.  30 hours post-discovery I'm playing with my brother/improviser Buck and his good sport silly girlfriend, Stf. 

Buck and I have experience (being bored with rules-heavy/established world gaming) but having fun with it anyway once certain liberties are taken.  Stf has zero roleplaying, but a huge love of improv (she's the keyboardist for the improv group Buck and I are in).  Because of our history of play, consensus and agreement was strong throughout, with good-natured ribbing.  SAN!'s mechanics worked well as outlets for this pre-existing dynamic - and depended a lot on it.

I led the setup step by step.  We each gave our identities and drives out loud – and the fun began.  Buck was William the Out-of-Work Shakespearean Actor driven by the Bard to Create Art, Stf was Spike, the Stripper/Dominatrix driven by Hate of all Penises (Penii?).  For some reason I only could think of a couch.  I bowed to Gods of Crazy-Ass and said “What the hell?”  - I became Comfy, the animated anthropomorphic couch, the accidental creation of a stoned hippy wizard who talks in his sleep.

The creation and endowment stage of the game really was a fun game in itself, when we started offering up fitting and absurd powers, knacks, and shortcomings. - tons of unclaimed TILT!.

We decided on a 5 4 3 2 1 trait allotment, but there was some slowdown while I hammered out trait/skill/power distinctions.  There were definitely some tough calls here:  Comfy's Brawn: Absorb Blunt Impact – is it a trait or a power...hmm..it'll happen a lot, so that's a trait.  Shooting nails from his frame?  Finesse trait.  Long Range Sniper Nail?...Power.  Group consensus rules the day here, which improved quickly with experience.  In future games we'll have more of a reference point, but nobody complained, and nobody gimped anybody, so what ev. 

With those characters Stf and I arrived at the same scenario – What do you get when you take an overacting male, a old couch, and a slut? We were pornographers, of course!  Stands to reason.  Very popular in niche markets in India, thanks to Comfy's virtuoso sitar-like vibratory modes.  The muling feral kittens living inside me helped with the resonance.  Then the first Bring It! - the Moral Majority was trying to shut us down on obscenity charges – how are we paying the rent?!  The Laughter said 'yes'.

Stf was looking unsure about the actual play, and Buck was giving me the “distrust of mechanics” face, just started narrating a introductory scene for Spike encountering Church Ladies and the po-po changing the locks on the studio.  I wanted her to feel powerful, cruel sexuality of her character, so I just made up a goth throne carried by four sweating beefcakes.  They moaned in sadomasochistic ecstasy as her nail-heels dug into the steps of their joints.  Stf cracked up and into character right then.  TILT for me! 

Buck was warm to things now, using his Knack: Quick Disguise to appear as a bum stumbling out of the alley, aiming streams of urine at Beatrice Larson, Church Lady.  Roll time – her 3 success, him 2 with his Finessed micturations, a miss!  But then he Twists a powered urine stream, chugging froth as fast as he spews it...that catches fire.  The unlucky 5-0 runs burning and smelling into the street where he's hit by a bus.  The other stops, drops, and rolls until he hits the feet of Spike.  We all saw the “Uh-Oh!” moment.  Stf only gave us the sound effect “Spbqrrt”, which can be no other than a stiletto through a man's temple.  Penis 0, Spike 1, Drive triggered, TILT earned.  Church Lady has to roll for Sanity after this display, and keeps it together enough to vow her return. 

Up in the studio, Comfy the couch is crashing on William's couch.  Actually, he's having sexual relations with it. (Buck made me spew water out my nose at that one...5 TILT!)  William complains about this, so I ask “Can I crash on you for a few days? Didn't think so, anyway, I like to pretend she's asleep.”  Eww...and TILT points.  William asks where the rent money went.  Comfy's shortcoming: Stoner memory.  “Dunno, dude”.  Knack: Finding random small objects.  William is not impressed with semi-rare coins, pens, or lint scupltures.  William's frustration boils over and he charges Comfy using Brawn: Stage Combat.  Comfy counters with  Power: Kleptomaniac, and transports the Witty Rapier (he also has a Happy Dagger) inside him, then absorbs the impact.  Just as the scuffle escalates, Buck switches to narrating a knock at the door! 

The landlord...(take it away, Stf!)...The flaming gay landlord, who is also prone to spontaneous combustion, has arrived.  (Note: My heart leaps...my GOTCHA is close!)    Another deliciously awkward moment of shared realization: Don't let him see a man fighting a couch!  There's no why, just think of the embarassment.  Comfy goes all couchy, while Will quick changes to the Lowly Vaguely Asian Maid “Housekeeping say, this place very clean, the people, they make very much money, prenty forl lent!”  TILT for Buck here.

Stf Brings It here, and TILTs Will into accidentally forgetting to remove his beard.  The Landlord notices and ignites.  William, more pissed than ever, runs to Comfy and throws him at the landlord...the stuffing ignites and...GOTCHA! I yell, flipping my character sheet to a chorus of “No ways”, and then I read:  “When set on fire, Comfy's soft exterior burns away to reveal a vicious, brutal Terminator/fold-out bed skeleton with green-flamed feral kittens acting as eyes.”  Yes, that's what I wrote.  The Demon-Couch-Hulk Comfy reaches to tear the landlord to pieces but is informed he has died of fright.  I move to rage out into the hall.  William makes up his mind to stop me.  With daring Finesse: Stage Acrobatics he leaps around Comfy, and grabbing the – TWIST! - convenient fire extinguisher, proceeds to do...NOTHING!  Buck's eyes go big as we all remember Will's shortcoming: Modern Technology.  I mime his impotent clicking, having forgotten to remove the pin.  TILT for me! 

I tear away madly down the hall, setting fires and trashing the varnish.  Will strikes back with his Sling and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune  Best. Swag. Ever.  As a Math grad in real life, I pulled a n expected value mechanic out for Inconvenience: Extreme Luck.  Basically a probability inversion – the closer you roll to the expected sum (3.5 per d6 times 4 dice = 14 expected), the stranger your luck will be.  Without rules we let inspiration lead us, so things tended to fit.  Did I mention we only used 4 d6s total?  Fast and loose, baby.  So anyway, Comfy stomps on a weak stair (Also Shortcoming #2: Stairs and Doors (I'm a frickin' couch, after all) – Stf balanced it with Knack #2: Makes Friends with Losers, Lowlifes, and Les Miserables) collapses through a few floors to the basement, where he melts, thermite-style into the sewer where his inner demon rage (and creepy feral chanting kittens) are doused. 

All of this has attracted the Fire Department and the police.  Spike, finally off work at the club, does her Hypnotizing Dance in full view of a police spotlight.  Several policemen begin to masturbate, but as they were still holding their guns, some blow their junk off.  Feminazi OverDrive points!  They should have remembered “Full Metal Jacket”.  Meanwhile, Will gives his Show-Stopping Speech to the rest of the crowd and dives, Gandalf vs. Balrog-style down to land on Comfy. “I'll break your fall”, Comfy promises, though we both remember a second too late that Comfy is now quite pointy.  Yeouch.  Inconvenience 3: Bruised and Cut.  No one remembered he needed to spend Drive to ignore it.  We called off our feud for the time being to avoid jailtime.  Comfy releases a double-batch of Ninja Incense of Hiding while Will becomes a Construction Worker.  The apartment destroyed, the whole group of us rondevouzs at the studio with the Landlord's body.

The plan: Bring the landlord back to life.  The solution: Rediculous, but effective.  Spike uses Knack: Super Knots to tie the body to Comfy's frame, which is plugged into an outlet.  She chases landlord's ghost around, ready to tie him to the body at the right time.  Will consults his Yorick skull for the ritual and rolls a Decently Non-Cryptic Answer.  Just 3 minutes before Will's Tempest in a Teapot lighting is to strike and seal the deal.....Church Lady shows up with a warrant and a SWAT team. 

Comfy can't move, so I Twist a power: Animate Furniture a la Beauty and the Beast.  4 successes later, half a porno studio is converging on the door.  Will does a passable disguise with Eric Estrada's uniform from CHiPs, and Spike lures them in.  Before we know it, we've reanimated the landlord but we end up with a legion of police ghosts for enemies. 

But at least the Rent's paid (almost..Spike had to agree to dominate him every now and then, so she's really hating William for the next adventure.


Yay!     


Post-Game Analysis and then a word from our sponsor:

-Although endowing and creation were shared, I started off doing did most of the narrating in the beginning, though that gave way to more even distributions later, allowing for different skill and comfort levels.  We did not attempt to follow turns, except in the He-said, She-said of resolutions.  We naturally gravitated (without my reminding anyone) toward narrating NPCs when our PCs were out of the scene. 

-We started with 20 Drive and 12 TILT, but that turned out to be too much Drive, since no one ran out, even with two of us not ever triggering ours.  Less initial Drive makes the PCs focus more at the outset.  Also, simultaneous drives (1 short, 1 long, 1 infinite?) might work too.  Mostly having too much fun to care...maybe turn TILT into Drive at some exchange rate?  Did I miss that somewhere?

-Rolling required a little thought, but only because of limited dice (just 4 d6s).  In the end that made all properties easier to make since they were all scaled to a d6, although there we lost the specificity/effectiveness mechanic here.   

-TILTs were used a LOT, even a few Changes, and Re-Rolls.  Love that mechanic, especially with more House Rules TILT earnings.  Endowments and Twists are the saviors of roleplaying, because fun (for me and mine) is had in the moment – and is impossible to artificially pre-plan.  I don't know how many X to take into the land of Y to defeat Z, and I don't care. Thank you for letting me remember on the way. 

-Sub-traits were scarcely used, though we were all about everything else.  It might have been the dice thing, though...no set scale, no obvious incentive to specialize.  Still, it was difficult to distinguish – see the playtest above. 

* My first GOTCHA moment was sublime.  I wish everyone that kind of experience.  The best part was I didn't even have to do anything...I was gleefully narrated into it.  Pure.  Joy.


I'm playing again this week – and this is coming from a guy who games maybe once every two months (but improvises every week).   

- Earl of Sherry

Thank you, Clint, for posting this!
(We know each other from doing improv in college)

You realize that you are totally the target audience for this, right?

I'm glad that you were able to tweak the rules to meet the dice limitations, because it seems clear to me that the rules as-written informed you enough that you could make it work without actually changing the setup of, "How should I contribute, and how do I treat others' contributions?"

And, yeah.  Just hilarious, thank you for posting it :)

-Marshall