We played Elfs. Lord of the Rings. That's all I'm gonna say. Transcript is here. Read it. Unless you're faint-hearted. Especially Ron. Remember those predictions about Granny the Green? ;)

http://web.madisontelco.com/~paganini/ElfsLog.html

That was mad funny. I snorted aloud several times.

Question, though: I saw no actual rules used - it seemed like all freeform role-play. Was there something I missed?

Hi,

Actually, I thought it was sorta gross ...

Ditto on the system request - when did the dice clatter? What did you say? When did people use Dumb Luck or Low Cunning? And so on.

Best,
Ron

I don't know if Nathan logs the OOC (out-of-character) channel, which is where the dice-rolls happen. And I was thinking about that myself: for a game like Elfs, the dice and interaction with the system is as much a part of the game as are the character events/results that comprise it.

So, Nathan, since I missed the game too, fill us in on how things worked and how the mechanics relate to events in the posted log, otherwise we're missing something: the log is just a "yeah, and then I...and then he...and wow, then..." sort of deal.

Ron Edwards wrote: Actually, I thought it was sorta gross ...

We could always try doing the roll in the Narration window.
I've sometimes wanted to line up mechanics with in game narration...its not super easy with all the funny side chatter going on. :>

Well, Ron, Clinton, as others have pointed out, all the system stuff is handled in the OOC channel. The log is *massive,* so I'm not posting it. :)

As for specific incidents, let's see, scanning the log...

Biguns used a Dumb Luck roll to grab Granny's whisky flask (character) and spill it on her (player). Only two successes were rolled, so spilling commenced, but not grabbing. (Flask went flying... not sure what happened to it.)

I did *not* have Chris roll for Repo to bang the vomit-soaked Granny. We were all (except him) too-busy covering our eyes and trying to keep our own selves from hurling at that point.

Someone used Low Cunning to fool the Wing Raiths with the Coat Check.

Pimppin used Low Cunning to tie Kahmul's shoes together.

Pretty much everything Preposterous did was Dumb Luck, especially finding his pony. :)

Chris asked for a Low Cunning roll for the rap-off, but I said we should play it out. He made a Low Cunning roll afterwards to decide who won. :)

Travis made a Dumb Luck roll to find a smoke (character) and some papers with writing about the Ring (player).

Travis made a Dumb Luck roll to get out the window (character) knocking the Raiths down in the process (player).

James made a Dumb Luck roll to light his smoke (character) and burn the entire place down around the rappers (player). ;)

That was Pimppin that tried to take the Ring Raiths Cloaks for them,and set them up with some 'ladies'... using Low Cunning

Paganini wrote: We played Elfs. Lord of the Rings. That's all I'm gonna say. Transcript is here. Read it. Unless you're faint-hearted. Especially Ron. Remember those predictions about Granny the Green? ;)

http://web.madisontelco.com/~paganini/ElfsLog.html

Ace wrote: It was funny and it was valuable in that I now know Elves isn't the sort of RPG I would enjoy

I deny all knowledge of the incident.

*elbows Mike* "You blew our cover!"

Seriously though, from other accounts and descriptions of Elfs I didn't believe that the game would be my cup of tea either. So far, my initial observation has proven correct.

Elfs operates with a certain level of base vulgarity (cussing, farting, screwing anything that moves, etc.) that I don't find particularly entertaining. I grossed myself out more than a couple times during that indie-gaming session. In a way though, that is part of the game's charm (does that make me a pervert?). Elfs makes me feel like I'm six years old again, but with a really bad potty mouth.

Elfs isn't a game that I would play regularly but for a few sessions of low-brow humor and action, and as a break from more "serious" play, it seems to work great. The Indie-netgaming session has been my only play experience with Elfs so far and, as Mike has already said, the game could be given a far different treatment in some other hands.

-Chris

I'm going to add something I've been considering not saying, and I'm sorry if this offends anyone but: I'm glad -- very glad -- I wasn't a part of the Elfs game that night. Honestly, it was too low brow. I didn't find most of it funny...just plain stupid, gross and childish.

Elfs as a game is funny.
This session wasn't.

In fact, this session actually offended me with its over-the-top "wannabe-nigger" vibe throughout. Elfs is supposed to be "oblivious, butt-scratching, selfish-little-twerp"-style role-playing, but I don't see that here. There's a huge difference between funny and gross, and I think the group completely missed it. Reading the log, I see mostly player self-indulgence in doing disgusting things and going over-the-top with it.

Sometimes the funniest things are not the things which are described or done, but referred to round-about or achieved despite the obvious intentions of the acting character.

Here's the deal: the players should have been forcing the characters to get out of the situation and everyone else's hair immediately, using director-style privelges and the mechanics built expressely for that. Alot of Elfs charm comes from the fact that you're playing a character who wants to do everything you don't want him to do. But as you are ultimately in control, he usually doesn't get to do what he wants...and the audience knows it: it's a comedy of errors, not a comedy of fart-jokes.

Obviously, the latter come in, but they and the behavior of the Elfs is not the focus of the game, they're bizzare Color and Not-The-Point. This seemed to be abandoned in the session I'm reading here: it looks like everyone wanted their elfs to be doing exactly what they were doing.

Mike Holmes wrote: It could be a very different game in other hands...

I think for most of us it is our first exposure to Elfs. The 'activities' was more extreme than I thought it would be at first. My thought was more a Munchkinized LotRs... its probable that we all took certain references from the game write-up and got too 'wanna-be'.

Directors stance
Pimppin is set up for Low Cunning, so I wasn't doing director stance stuff with him, but I might next time anyway.

It seemed like we were avoiding 'getting the show on the road' for creating this 'low brow color'.
Nathan said something to the effect that we didn't get as far along as he expected (we never left the Shire) this time. I think we may have fixated on the character color (funny though it sometimes was...especially the rap off), at the expense of moving along.
I know we never advanced the Gamist qualities, the focusing on 'kill stuff/ Gain coins/ spend Coins'. I'm hoping that as we head out, we can focus on the more defined combat round/treasure gain aspects. More focus on the 'adventure',in a more traditional sense (module parody).
I like the game, I also would like to see it calm down a bit into more of a parody, with hints of off-color as consequence instead of off-color as primary with adventure as secondary.
(It reminds me of my GenCon experience with Ars Magica in 1988...lots of colorful 'role-playing'... nothing much happened in hours of play...we barely got past the city gates)
That said, I enjoyed my self. I also think we got carried away with an impression of the game, and hopefully "got that out of our system"
Pimppin is supposed to be 'sleazy', but I plan to make it a comic accent, hopefully getting him in trouble (hey, he botches one of those Low Cunnings, and he's out Low Cunning for a while being genital stage)
Hopefully we will turn this game into "What would happen if the Hobbits were all a bunch of Selfish, Greedy, Violent adventurers instead of Noble, Generous, Peaceloving countryfolk?"

Bob McNamee wrote:
Hopefully we will turn this game into "What would happen if the Hobbits were all a bunch of Selfish, Greedy, Violent adventurers instead of Noble, Generous, Peaceloving countryfolk?"

Hi there,

I'm glad Raven posted, because I couldn't figure out a way to say what he said, and then he said it perfectly. I shudder at the idea that Nathan's transcript is being taken as an example of Elfs as a game design.

Elfs is a game about killing things, getting treasure, and being at risk from the environment as well as from one's fellows on occasion. It's not story-stuff, and putting it into a story-framework, I think, is an exercise in nothing. Nathan provided me with the LotR writeup before playing, and I mentioned the problem then, but he was pretty committed to the parody and that's OK.

I also think the internet-context is a poor medium for the game. It's built so strongly to capture the 70s dungeon crawl - in many ways, it's my homage to Dave Arneson - that taking it into any other medium besides face-to-face doesn't work for me. To clarify, by the way, Elfs is not built for characters like Pimpin; I can't see how he got made up from the rules. That character must be understood as a product of this group.

Oddly, people seem to be getting the idea that it's pretty much kill puppies for satan with Elfquest characters, which it's not. Your character's "stage" is a satire on alignment, specifically in terms of how it affects nothing about the reward system of play. I think Raven's point about the character/player disconnect is well taken and should be understood better in play for this group.

Best,
Ron

(I don’t have a copy of Elfs. The rules examples are taken from the quickstart that Nathan wrote up for the Elfs LotR game on the Indie-netgaming site.)

Any character in the Genital stage gets a +1 to Spunk for 24 hours if they get laid. It doesn’t seem to matter if the target of affection is a sheep, an old granny, or a knot hole in a fence. The game offers a reward for base behavior or base behavior results from failure, as in the Anal stage where lack of success results in a gaseous expulsion. How is this ever not vulgar?

I can’t speak for anyone else that played in that session of Elfs, but by my own scale I did go over the top. Before play started the group agreed to not pull any punches and I’m sure that stamp of approval was partly responsible for the resulting game. The IRC format was also partly responsible I’d say. Based on my own understanding of the system though I can’t help but wonder how many groups who have played this game have played it “incorrectly”.

-Chris

I'm just curious; was emulation of Bored of the Rings an influence (overt or perhaps subconscious) on the play session? Had any of the participants read it?

- Walt

C. Edwards wrote: Based on my own understanding of the system though I can?t help but wonder how many groups who have played this game have played it ?incorrectly?.

Ron Edwards wrote: .....

To clarify, by the way, Elfs is not built for characters like Pimpin; I can't see how he got made up from the rules. That character must be understood as a product of this group.

.....

Best,
Ron

I actually kinda liked the idea that Pimpin would fast talk (Low Cunning Roll) the Raiths into giving him their Cloaks at the Cloak check room, and have them vanish because they had nothing to hold their form...

Walt:

I've read bits of Bored of the Rings, but mostly I was inspired by the material at the Tolkien Sarcasm Page. (URL not handy, but it's a high-traffic site . . . should show up on google.)

Bob:

Next time you have an idea like that, feel free to tell me. It's a good one, I just didn't think of it. Better yet, you could make it explicit when you call for a roll. I.E., "I'd like to fast-talk the wraiths into giving me their cloaks so that they vanish because there's nothing left to hold their form."

"What would happen if the Hobbits were all a bunch of Selfish, Greedy, Violent adventurers instead of Noble, Generous, Peaceloving countryfolk?"

"What would happen if the Hobbits were all a bunch of Bestial, Off-color, Sex-crazed Frat pledges."

Ahhh, so in a way Elfs is more akin to Shadows, kind of a Shadows: The Farting. Taking that into account should definitely increase my enjoyment of the game.

-Chris

Well, to hit various points as one of the playtesters...

Personally, I found the granny rape to be beyond anything that I'd want to do... but since we had agreed that "anything goes" beforehand, I didn't say anything during the game, but pretty much just tried to ignore that bit.

Bored of the Rings was definitely an influence on me... indeed, I just re-read it a few months ago, so it would have been hard for me to avoid as an influence.

To Raven, the way that you describe things is pretty much what I think I was trying to do on the two points where I actually did something with game significance -- on the first one, I wanted to find more clues about what was going on, and decided that Merry wanted a doobie. On the second, I wanted to knock down the wraiths so everyone would have a chance to get away, and I decided Merry just wanted to get the hell out of there.

--Travis

The directors stance things primarily apply if using Dumb Luck however.
For the record, Pimpin isn't being roleplayed...its being moved as a Pawn from my perspective as a Player.
"Hey, lets try to tie the laces together, then scram...if he gets caught its just more motivation to run along..."

Nathan, no prob I should have voiced that idea...although I liked what you came up with..."master never lets us have girls..."
got rid of them...for a bit ... my real intent.

greyorm wrote: I'm fairly certain Nathan takes the stance he does because despite this not being the case, he's not recognizing he's making certain assumptions about the method-play-level of elfs that do not fit: it looks like an RPG where you play smart-ass, horny, disgusting little twerps...but it isn't! That's an assumption that gets dragged in from other games.

Ron wrote:
"Oddly, people seem to be getting the idea that it's pretty much kill puppies for satan with Elfquest characters, which it's not."

You know, I've been re-reading the rules to see if I just skipped a section or something when I was quickly reading the rules the day we played (I had just gotten them).
Other than a bit of 'feeling our way around the system' and not getting into defined 'combat rounds' etc, I haven't been able to find these intent things in the rules.
Yes, directors stance. I LIKE directors stance (sometimes too much as Mike can attest). I don't particularly care about my character,so I have no problem wanting something vastly different than he does.
He (Pimppin) is created as a Spunk 2 Dumb Luck 2 Low Cunning 4... the same as Toe Cheese. Genital Stage with Sleazy demeanor (which I invented). Equipment is vaguely emphasising phallic overtones.

Powergaming Munchkin play indicates he should do as many underhanded, tricky, backstabbing, creative acts as possible (ie Low Cunning Rolls)...and preferrably try to 'get some' every couple days for that +1 spunk. Only after botching the Low Cunning roll (which drops my Low cunning to 0 for Genital), or Running out of ideas does it make sense to play him using Dumb Luck (thus going into contrasting what he wants with what I want... which is to complicate his life generally).
Other than doing some 'speaking in character' which is to show attentiveness/go for humor I fail to see how play is going wrong given this character.

I want to see the game go to a more 'powergame module' parody, but I'm just not seeing the 'playing it wrong' in the rules.

Hmm, that last post seems a bit defensive reading it in the light of day.

I guess my main point would be, if a group of gamers, some who've read the rules and some who've had the rules explained to them, none who've played it before, can botch the intent of the game... that's a good thing to know!
It might mean a helpful "Elfs-Munchkin Manual.pdf" would be useful to help get them on the intended track.
Consider too, this game group isn't your 'generic D&D VtM gamer' group. This intent botching group hangs out here, have read GNS, are comfortable with Dir stance, and 'loose holds' on Player/Character divide. Our last several games have been Universalis, Soap, Cornerstone, and The Questing Beast...lots of Dir Stance, and some Character control swapping there.
Several of us read some or all of the Elfs threads before playing.

If we went wrong, what's a more standard group going to do?

(of course maybe we're more Narrativists instead of Gamists...I doubt any of us WERE powergamer/munchkins, but we most likely all played with some, I had one or more in my games)

edited : This is only the first session. We could be on-track from here, and at least part of the reason would be threads like this.

Hey

I was Biguns Beltbuckle and these are my thoughts on the game that night:

1) IRC gaming is very, very different from face-to-face gaming. One is not better than the other, but their differences need to be noted (and probably have been on other threads). IRC can lead to a messy game. Due to the seperation of players and the time it takes to type a response, the GM cannot simple blow a whistle and get in line. While he's reading what someone just said, others can be going off on fart jokes. Chaos can ensue. Elfs is the kind of game that I believe leads to that chaos much quicker than might be the case with a non-parody game.

2) I absolutely didn't know what to expect from the session and I absolutely didn't expect what happened. It became clear to me that it was a free-for-all after Granny started talking about the Ring and none of us seemed interested in addressing that element. I had already decided that Biguns wasn't going to be a proactive go-getter, so I had him on the sidelines adding color. Mistake? I don't know. There were a few instances where someone would address the situation (such as the Cloak Room), but mostly I think we were frolicking in chaos.

3) I never got a sense of the character I was using. In fact, I kept belching and farting which are clearly Anal Stage activities, though I was playing an Oral Stage character. A wino, actually. A hic hobbit wino. By the time I left the game I wasn't sure what was happening or why. It felt sort of like I was trying to work my way through a noisy crowd with a bum leg or something.

None of that is indicative of the system or the GM or any of that stuff. The game seemed to work well. The parody elements were funny and appropriate. I think we just reverted to Beavis and Butt-Head mode and were unable/unwilling to get out of it. More appropriately, I think we were mostly unsure if we were supposed to get out of it.

4) Elfs is a fun way to parody dungeon crawling. But since we were doing LOTR instead, I think that concept got lost. The chance to dishonor Hobbiton probably outweighed any notion of the game's premise.

5) I'm in line with others who question how Elfs could not inspire the kind of debauchery that ensued in our session. Farting, screwing, and chewing on things are locked into the rules. Imagine a group of gamers who've been playing an intense Vampire game for months. One night they need a break, so they break out Ron's Elfs. The fart jokes are going to fly.

In conclusion, I think Elfs is great. I'd like to play a real module parody with it sometime. The LOTR session was funny at times (I was laughing out loud more than once), but too messy in the end. But as Bob pointed out, it was the first session. Maybe the players have worked some of the color out of their system and the game will take off in a more appropriate direction.

of course maybe we're more Narrativists instead of Gamists

James V. West wrote: It became clear to me that it was a free-for-all after Granny started talking about the Ring and none of us seemed interested in addressing that element.

I'm in line with others who question how Elfs could not inspire the kind of debauchery that ensued in our session.

on chat tonight

well... I forget that the sole munchkin player I remember would have been going
"Ok enough boring description, how much is it worth to you for us to do this?
now lets get on the road, and where's the damn wandering monsters so I can kill it and take its treasure
<Paganini> Hehe
<Paganini> I was trying to use another of the old staples to hook you in...
<Paganini> "Do it or die!"

but I won't forget tomorrow...

re-twerp D&D

nope...never played that way, ever...the games I GM-ed almost never had a Player of this type (with a couple exceptions)

We were aware of this type of play, primarily at the point where D&D suddenly became the 'popular' thing to do... it just didn't fit our local group(s) style(s). Saw it / heard it at Cons, though

You've probably all been saying this the whole time, but Mike Holmes said this in chat after The Questing Beast tonight the makes it all make sense for us...

<MHolmes> When I say the group is too Narrativist, I mean that looking at it, the group seemed to be looking at the game from a POV where it was important to support the "idea" of the game, and make a statement about the issue of munchkinism.