Hi!

I recently discovered the TV series "Burn Notice" (I am still in the middle of the second season, so please no spoilers). I wouldn't call myself really a "fan" of the show, but I like it enough to become really interested when I learned that Elisabeth Shoemaker (that I already did know as the designer of the fine game "It's complicated" and for the pictures in other games like "Annalise") was writing a game based on the same premise: a group of "blacklisted" spies, trapped in their home city (with their old family and friends), trying to clear their names and helping other people (and making some money) at the same time.

The game is called "Blowback", the development blog is HERE.

I offered to help playtest the game, and I got the latest playtest draft (dated march 2010), but some organization problems (and two players that had to drop out at the last moment) delayed the playtest until yesterday. I hope that this playtest is still useful anyway, even if we probably have used a outdated version of the rules. Elisabeth asked to post the playest results here or in story-games, so here we are.

The players were three: myself, Claudia and Michele.  Every player in the game play two characters, a "professional" (a spy: there are two kind, "lifers", a sort of jack of all trades, and "Artists", more specialized on a single trade) and a "civilian" (the mother, brother, son, friend, etc of the spy played by another player).

I was the GM (or, as is called in this game, "the Agency"),  Claudia as the professional character created "Sylvia Fisher",  Provocateur Artist, [Commando 0, Diversion 2, Pavement 1, Provocateur 5], Michele created "Mark Johnson", Commando Artist [commando 5, Diversion 2, pavement 1, Provocateur 0]. As Civilians, Claudia played Mark's Brother Alex Johnson, a Dentist [Pavement 2] with a wife and a little daughter living in Miami (we did choose that as location, as hometown of both the professionals)  and Michele played Dwayne O'Hara, ex-husband of Sylvia and night club owner. [[commando 1, pavement 1]

The character creation worked well, and the players were very engaged with their characters. the only problem was a number missing from the number of relationships for civilian characters at the end of the "civilians" description [on the playtest draft it's written "They also get one 5-point relationship and 3-points relationships. Any other relationships start at two". The number of 3-points relationships is missing. For our game we guessed "two"

In hindsight, it was an error to make them both artists, and to have low skills in "pavement". They were too specialized and they lacked some very important skills.

The premise was that they were blacklisted after Mark had freed Sylvia, that was kept captive in a Russian prison. And that he consider her responsible of their situation.  Wanting to play a "usual episode", we decided that they had already solved some "problems" for people and to play "the 6th-7th episode of the first season", skipping all the setting-up of their situation.

I rolled for a "client" (there are tables to help generate a "case", rolling for the kind of client, and the kind of opposition they have to go against), and got a 6: "one of the civilians".: Dwayne, the ex-husband.  For the Mook, I rolled a 3, and decided for a dirty cop. For the boss, I rolled a 3, "Agent".

Thinking about it afterwards, I would have liked a little more help in prepping up the Case. As a GM, I am very lazy: I want to play, not to work, so everything the system take care for me, it's good. Reading the game text I underestimate the number of things the Agency has still  to do to before playing.  I did come up with the rest on the fly, but I am not very satisfied with what I did come up,  so next time I will have to prepare the Case before meeting the others for the game. Anyway, the case was this: a group of dirty cops and agents who wanted to establish a protection racket on the city zone where Dwayne had his Night Club.

The Mook was Tom Ryan,  dirty cop, distracted by: women, confident about: force.
The Boss was Morgan Stark, Agent, Modus operandi: commando, crew discipline technique: fear, when crossed: kill, ultimate accomplishment if not stopped: take the Night Club from Dwayne (and a lot of other locals or shops in the area).

Seeing that the client in this case was a PC, I started by having Tom and other corrupt cops visiting the night club, causing some wanton destruction and telling Dwayne that he did need their "protection". That ended in a fight,  I rolled commando dice for the mook and Michele for Dwaine, nobody had any success so we jumped the scene to the morning after, when Sylvia go to the police station to pay bail to spring Tom out of prison (he was arrested for attacking a police officer). After hearing about his problem, Sylvia decided to help him.

After they accept the case, the gameplay is divided in 3 phases: "Analysis": finding informations, creating assets, and building a pool of dice to spend on the second phase (but the Agency get dice too), "Mission". And the 3rd phase, "Blowback", with the repercussions

And at this time, with the start of the Analysis phase, the pace of the game dropped considerably. The principal reason was that, for all the spy movies or series that we had seen, when we had to come up with something cool to do, we all didn't know what to do.  Really a lot of time was spent trying to decide a course of action, and a problem we noticed was that most of the earlier analysis actions that we thought of involved always Pavement [reconnaissance, fact-finding, hacking, wiretapping, searching, knowing people, etc].  I don't know if it was our lack of imagination, or if really it's so, but it seems to me that even in the Burn Notice episodes Michael, Sam and Fiona always start with some pavement fact-findings. And the character who had the highest pavement skill was Alex the dentist...

Trying to get information with a skill of 1 didn't make any sense, from what it's written on the first "analysis" page: if you "go for the broke" [take risks] you have a chance of failure double of that of a success [1-4: failure. 5-6: success] and you become a liability (a momentum - a difference between successes and failures dice -  equal to the skill make you a liability, see the "becoming a liability" chapter),  and if you go "without incident" [no risks] you get zero dice (half of one, rounded down) and the Agency get 1 die (the dice pool, less the amount taken by the PC] , so Mark asked his brother to "ask around" other shop owners in the zone.  (causing stress to his relationship)

Then Sylvia tried to get information from the Mook by posing as an internal affair cop who was investigating his direct superior.  She did roll all her 5 dice and got no success. Total Failure, a -5 momentum, she become a liability, and she got discovered and captured. Mark at the same time tried to use diversion to help her... and when he rolled his two dice he failed and did become a liability, too

All the professional characters disabled in TWO ROLLS???  We obviously were doing something wrong, it was too easy to become a liability with a single failed roll. But I checked the text three times and we were following the written rules, so I think that there is some problem in the written text of that draft. As is written, these are the chances of becoming a liability after the first roll:
Skill= 1  Chance of becoming a liability:  66%
Skill= 2  Chance of becoming a liability:  44%
Skill= 3  Chance of becoming a liability:  30%
Skill= 4  Chance of becoming a liability:  20%
Skill= 5  Chance of becoming a liability:  13%

With chances like these,  we were not even that much unlucky: it should be rather normal to have both operatives captured with a few rolls...

Not wanting to stop the game after two rolls, we decided to re-roll Sylvia's attempt, and this time she got a single success, getting a -3 momentum (that stopped her from trying her single highest skill for the entire rest of the evening) but at least let us continue the investigation.

After a while, anyway, we had to stop the game for the night: between character creation and the checking of rules, we didn't even finish the analysis phase.

Talking with the other players after the game, they said that they like the premise of the game and their characters, but having to come up "a lot of cool thing to do" during Analysis is a chore. I felt the same way: maybe we were victim of having too high expectations about what we had to come up, and if we hadn't tried so much to do something interesting we could have had an easier time.  And next time I will prepare the Case before the game, with all the time to think of other characters and places and stuff (but sadly this lessen my interest for the game: I really prefer low-prep games...). The biggest problem was the risk of becoming a liability with every rolls, though. It made them really cautious, too much for the genre.

Hi Moreno! Thank you so much for playtesting, and I'm sorry things got frustrating.

The rules have indeed changed since the playtest document: now, when you roll, anything FOUR or higher is a success; and you only become a liability if your negative momentum is GREATER than your skill. So if you're a Civilian whose dice pool has zeroed out, you don't immediately become a liability— although another character can still bail you out by rolling to help you while using your negative momentum as a modifier.

What specifically would you like to see to help The Agency create jobs and facilitate play? Was it setting up the situation, or just figuring out how to coerce the characters that was difficult? Both? What's some of the prep work that you'd rather the book give you the system for?

It's been a while since I've seen the first season of Burn Notice; I'm sorry to hear about your Pavement issues. Here's an excerpt from the current (final\unfinished) draft; would something like this have helped you know what you could and should do?

Analysis skill examples

In Analysis, each skill is used to gather information and gain advantage; they're not used to save the day. The following is a non-exhaustive list of examples outlining what you can do with your skills during Analysis.

A single roll of PAVEMENT will allow you to:

    * Find out the word on the street in a single area of influence (the internet, the police, an area of town, a specific gang). Three or more successes allows you to widen the area of influence (police and military networks, the whole town, the criminal underground).
    * Place a bug in enemy territory. Three or more successes allows you to bug the whole place.
    * Discover any bugs hidden in an area. Three or more successes gives you a gut feeling for who placed the bugs, based on their specs.
    * Surveil an unsub for three or four hours. Three or more successes lets you go for as long as it takes.

A single roll of DIVERSION will allow you to:

    * Place one weapons cache in a public place without getting caught. Three or more successes and it won't be found by anyone but you.
    * Start a false rumor among the enemy. Three or more successes and the rumor takes on a life of its own.
    * Sabotage an enemy's plan. Three or more successes and the plan won't collapse until just the moment you say it will.
    * Make sure all eyes are on you for five minutes. Three or more successes and all eyes will be on you for ten minutes.

A single roll of PROVOCATEUR will allow you to:

    * Go undercover for 24 hours. Three or more successes means that your identity will be welcomed back to the people you interacted with for as long as it remains uncompromised. (So write down the alias you used.)
    * Arrange an introduction to someone important in the local scene, no matter how nefarious or famous, as long as you know their name. Three or more successes, and they feel honored to meet you.
    * Develop an asset; this means that you can get someone to trust and rely on you in a relatively short period of time. Three or more successes and they will risk bodily injury for you, no questions asked.
    * Lie your ass off about anything, and your story rings true. Three or more successes and it's solid— you'll pass a polygraph if issued, and if your story gets checked out, you've already planted evidence that confirms what you've said.

A single roll of COMMANDO will allow you to:

    * Profoundly intimidate someone with your physical might and general ruthlessness. Three or more successes, and they spread the word not to mess with you.
    * Jury-rig a half-decent weapon, explosive, or tool out of whatever's available. Three or more successes and it's just as good as the real thing.
    * Do something requiring serious athletic prowess, like scale a wall, low-crawl for a mile through the mud, or hold your breath for 3 or 4 minutes. Three successes and you don't even break a sweat.
    * Strong-arm your way out of a bad situation. Three or more successes, and they're too surprised or injured to follow you.

---

In my experience, people tend to reach for Commando or Provocateur first, either sweet-talking people into giving them information or knocking heads around and breaking fingers. It's really interesting to me that you guys went right for the Pavement, and you're right, going right for Pavement is probably more true to the source material than going Commando.

Does any of this help?

Hi Elisabeth!

Elizabeth wrote:
Hi Moreno! Thank you so much for playtesting, and I'm sorry things got frustrating.

The rules have indeed changed since the playtest document: now, when you roll, anything FOUR or higher is a success; and you only become a liability if your negative momentum is GREATER than your skill. So if you're a Civilian whose dice pool has zeroed out, you don't immediately become a liability— although another character can still bail you out by rolling to help you while using your negative momentum as a modifier.

What specifically would you like to see to help The Agency create jobs and facilitate play? Was it setting up the situation, or just figuring out how to coerce the characters that was difficult? Both? What's some of the prep work that you'd rather the book give you the system for?

Here's an excerpt from the current (final\unfinished) draft; would something like this have helped you know what you could and should do?

Analysis skill examples

[snip examples]