I wanted to test this game with 3 players. It worked! Emily was the Wife, Vincent was the Fisherman, I played ghosts and demons to both of them.

The is broken up into Acts. Act I is the Fisherman and the Wife chat before the Fisherman leaves for sea. They describe their characters, their relationship, any conflicts between them. The Fisherman asks the Wife how many nets she has mended and what is the condition of his boat, and the Wife asks how long the Fisherman will be gone, and what premonitions he has of his trip. The questions are answered by each drawing a card, and the suit determines the number of nets and days away. This number then determines how many scenes the Fisherman and Wife have with the demons/ghosts (called obake in the text. The game is set in Edo period Japan.)

So Emily and Vincent established that the Fisherman and Wife were an old couple, their children were grown and married with families of their own. The Fisherman wanted to retire with the hope that their children would take care of them, the WIfe believed the Fisherman should try to get into politics. The Fisherman was reluctant to bother.

The Fisherman would be gone 2 days, and he believed he would encounter a storm. The Wife mended 2 nets, and the boat was lucky.

Acts II and III: We alternated scenes between the Fisherman and the obake he encountered, and the Wife and her obake, and started with the Fisherman. At the beginning of each scene human and obake player each draw a card to find out what their characters' intentions are. The obake player uses the intentions to figure out what kind of being theiy are. Obake intentions are seduce (hearts), serve (diamonds), devour (clubs), possess (spades), or supplant (Ace of spades). Humans intentions are seduce (hearts), enslave (diamonds), steal power (clubs), merge (spades), and destroy (Ace of Spades). The each player gets 6-10 cards. Players go through the scenes by speaking in character while laying down one card at a time. Whoever plays the higher card takes the trick (two cards). The person with the most tricks fulfills their intention and describes what happens.

Scene 1 between Fisherman and Obake: I drew diamonds (serve). Vincent drew hearts (seduce) I decided that my obake was the ghost (yurei) of the Fisherman's first love who died at sea under mysterious circumstances. He was not surprised to see her, perhaps she visited his boat regularly. The Fisherman won the most tricks. He seduced the ghost, who later tore up his nets when she left, frustrated that she didn't get to serve him. At least not in the way she had hoped.

Scene 1 between the Wife and Obake: I drew a spades (possess), Emily drew hearts (seduce). This time I was the ghost of the Wife's first love, another fisherman who also died under mysterious circumstances. In the end, the ghost won, and possessed the wife. WHen she looked in mirror, she saw the face and body of her dead lover. He agreed to help her get into politics herself, now that she looked like a man.

Scene 2 Fisherman and Obake: I drew diamonds again, and Vincent drew hearts again. This time I was demon that was part octopus, part woman. I won that round. The octopus woman served the Fisherman by putting fish into his nets, making him food, cleaning his boat. All the while she changed shape here and there, sometime appearing as a naked woman to taunt him knowing that he wanted to seduce her.

Scene 2 Wife and Obake: I drew hearts, Emily drew clubs (steal power). It was festival season, and the possessed Wife walked to town. She passed an altar with a beautiful demon sitting on top. The Wife won, and the power she stole was influencing people (I think.) I was something that, with her new body of a young man, and the new demon power, the Wife could enter politics herself.

Scene 3 Fisherman and Obake: Again I drew diamonds, and Vincent drew hearts. I was the ghost from the first scene again. This one ended in a tie, so the Fisherman seduced his dead lover's ghost again, and the ghost tidied his boat and served him.

Act IV: In the final act, the couple reunites. I was trying to see how players would decide what kind of demon the third player would be. We drew cards again. Vincent drew (surprise!) hearts, I drew clubs, Emily drew diamons (enslave). So I was the demon who possessed the Wife. I wanted to stay possessed. The Wife wanted to enslave the demon, the Fisherman wanted to seduce....anyone.. I won that final round, so the Wife stayed possessed, and became the local magistrate. The Fisherman left to travel from shore to shore. The marriage ended because the wife was possessed by a ghost, and didn't seem to mind. The Fisherman probably went back to sea and kept seducing his dead lover.

The game took a little more than an hour, I think. It's very fun, very simple, and it's odd how the right cards always seem to come up for choosing intention. I'm too tired to say more, other than what a joy it is to have a playtest go so well.

Julia

I haven't been this excited to see a game finished for quite a while.
Is there a new draft up at the site yet and how is the ashcan coming along for GenCon?

Question: how does all the Act I stuff tie into later Acts? Such as the wife mending nets and the boat being lucky? Or is it just used to add that old-story-ish odd-things-mentioned-that-never-come-up-again quality to play that can be found in many old folk tales?

Hi, Julia!

I'm following your actual play reports about this game with expectation.

One question about the cards played during a scene to play for tricks. Do you deal them open? I mean, does the other player know what cards do you have before starting the dialog? I assume not. Then, don't you find a little weird to choose what card to play during the first rounds, when you have no idea about the statements you want to back-up more strongly?

Another question, don't you find sometimes difficult to find proper fresh situations when combinations are repeated, like the fisherman always getting hearts and you diamonds?

Raven, I will have ashcans at GenCon. The game works, but I'm not sure how I want to do the final layout, so I'm handbinding about 16-20 copies with handmade paper, where no two are alike, and then handbinding another 16-20 on cheaper paper with a basic layout. As I write this I'm taking a break from writing the last 5-10 paragraphs so I can pass it on to the editor. I don't know why the last little bit is so excruciatingly difficult to finish.

In Act I you find out who the Fisherman and his Wife are, what their relationship is like, how old they are, etc. One thing I forgot to mention was the Six Word Story. The Fisherman and Wife exchange six words. In Act I the Wife asks the Fisherman to give her a story with the words. At the end of the game, the Wife tells a story with the six words she was given. In Act IV, the Wife may ask the Fisherman what six words she gave him (which he wove into a story in Act I). If he remembers them, she knows something is up. It's purely a narrative thing, but helps give insight on the characters and how they may have been transformed when they were apart.

Last night the Fisherman gave the Wife these 6 words: How many beaches does the sea wash?", and the Wife gave the Fisherman these words: "Bring me back a pretty shell". So the Fisherman said, "last time I was out, I found this amazing shell..."

The Wife said, "I know. You told me about it. That's why I'm asking you to bring me back a pretty shell."

It made for a funny little moment of bickering between two people who've been married for 45 years. We forgot to check in with the Fisherman in Act IV to see if he remembered the words, but he was quite shocked that his Wife has turned into a man. In other sessions the six word story thing worked a little better.

The number of nets the wife mends is the number of times she encounters an obake. The condition of the boat has worked in some games better than others. When I've played it with my husband, it's great for sexual innuendo. We talked a little about how the Fisherman's boat was lucky this time (the other options based on the suit of the card drawn and big, full equipped, and beautiful.)

Arturo
You can see your cards, but the other player can't, unless you're playing with Vincent, who for some reason holds his cards just where I can see them. It's not wierd not to know. If you play a low card without knowing what the other player has, your statement would be uncompelling and uncertain. If the other player counters with a higher card, her statement would be more certain, and the player who wins the trick makes inroads with her intention.

It actually worked really well, story-wise that we kept getting the same suits. The obake player chooses what kind of being she will be after she sees what her and the other player's intentions are. Since we kept getting the same suits, it made for good continuity. We discovered why the Fisherman likes to go out to sea, evne if he wants to retires. He keeps hooking up with the ghost of his first love. He seduces her over and over again, and all she wants to do is serve him (we established that he wasn't surprised to see her on the boat, she appears frequently). In the second scene, I just happened to play another type of obake, and the Fisherman was unsuccessful in seducing her.

Thank you both for your enthusiasm!

Julia