The Forge Archives

Hello,

Last night we played The Mountain Witch at the campus club meeting. I GM'd with four players. First news? Massive positive response; afterwards, one person pointed out that we'd actually all become better friends, to whatever small extent, simply by playing this game. Not only was the fun factor very high, but also the sense of Wham, Story shared across everyone. It's not consensual storytelling - it's role-playing which confers authorship power, which I think is tremendously different.

Anyway, here are lots and lots of playtesting comments. Tim, please use as you see fit.

Also, I just decided to break it into two posts, so let's get going on discussing this one, and I'll finish up the second as soon as I can and add it.

Fate stuff
We used the random-draw with replacement method for assigning Fates. The characters ended up with UNHOLY PACT, HAVE YOUR REVENGE, ALLEIGANCE WILL CALL, and FEARS COME TO LIFE. A suggestion for a new Fate cropped up almost at once: DESPERATELY IN LOVE. The player can choose who the loved one is, player-character or NPC; also the degree of sexuality (could be none). I like this a lot and recommend that it be added.

Also, my concern with YOU WILL BETRAY YOUR BEST FRIEND was shared by the others, and we simply left it out of play (i.e. no one wanted it). We all liked the point that although the Fate (a) brought major content into play and (b) had to get expressed as part of the general creative expectations, every character was free to deal with the Fate in whatever way, as long as they didn't dodge it. That's the main reason that the betrayal one was jettisoned quickly, as it didn't permit that freedom.

Some talk has been bandied about concerning whether expressing Fates should be tied to confronting the Witch-King, or to have any sort of "endgame" circumstances that should be monitored and fulfilled prior to confronting the Witch-King. Based only on this single experience (and thus qualified as a "strong indicator" rather than a conclusion), I suggest that no such mechanism is necessary. The group had absolutely no problems bringing their Fates into play prior to and during the final confrontation, especially since several involved the Witch-King anyway, and the resolutions of the Fates blended seamlessly into the decisions made during many scenes. So I think, pending further play-experience, that the standing rules are perfectly sufficient to see the Fates get expressed - as long as the players have full control over how their characters choose to deal with their Fates.

It might be interesting to compare this assertion on my part to Paul Czege's assertion that if the players make up the Master, then there is no need to fear that the player-characters won't try to kill the Master during Endgame; I think they're comparable notions.

During play, one player did manage to dodge his character's Fate slightly, unfortunately - he had the UNHOLY PACT, and apparently the Pact concerned delivering one of the other player-characters into the Witch-King's power ... and so he claimed he'd fulfilled the Pact simply by showing up ("Here he is!"), and then decided to kill the Witch-King. In other words, he didn't do or not do anything differently from a character without such a pact. However, the other three were so awesome with their Fates that it didn't matter much.

How did it all turn out? Without going into too much detail, the Revenge guy did a fine job of not Trusting or helping anyone for the first few scenes, much to the puzzlement of the others (who saw instantly how powerful Trust-based helping was to resolution), then trapping two of them once inside the fortress and attacking them. The Past Allegiance player (who'd hinted at his Fate a lot back in the Jikininki fight) flashed on this right away and instantly melded his hinted-at Fate to the one just revealed, by offering to atone (i.e. die) after the Witch gets killed. The Revenge guy eventually agreed, but not until he'd really scared the Fears Come to Life guy along the way.

All this ended up very satisfyingly during and after the fight with the Witch. Let's see ... the Allegiance-guy sacrificed himself, the Pact guy was incapacitated (by the Revenge-guy, not the Witch) but survived due to a narration-stealing by the Fear guy, and the Revenge guy walked away from his revenge ... but the Fear guy, embarassed and enraged by the revelation of his fears, sets out upon his trail. Thus the vicious cycle of vengeance continues ... it was beautiful blood opera. I give great credit to Ross, the player of the Fear guy, because he has a consistently-excellent way of having characters seem isolated and disconnected from the others, then swooping in later in a session with outstanding emotional and logistic impact on everything.

Trust stuff
In line with the above comments, I think that Trust levels/points don't need any quantitative connection either to Fates or to the Witch.

We were a little confused by the character sheet notation for Trust. Are the parentheses for the original value? Then the next (middle) column for current Trust level? And the final (right) column for the current Trust points within a scene?

Oh yes, and I could have sworn I'd read about starting values for Trust, but in the heat of beginning the session, we couldn't find any instructions for love nor money. Since the Zodiac modifiers include -2's, and they aren't used except at the beginning of play, it made sense to us to start with 2 Trust as the base. Thus the character with the Snake Zodiac had 0 Trust for the Boar, but 2 for the Dragon, and would have had 3 for the Dog if there were one.

Now for the single most important play-based observation: as currently written, there is no reason ever to drop Trust among characters, even (or especially) if you're suspicious of a given character. All of us strongly, strongly suggest that if character A has high Trust in character B, then character B will have a very strong advantage if he or she decides to harm A: just add the Trust to the relevant roll. Trust, in that case, becomes a potential Betrayal score. So in that case, A wouldn't have a high Trust level in another character unless he or she ... well, trusts B not to do that.

I cannot over-emphasize how strongly every member of our group agrees with that idea. We think the game is broken without it.

Abilities stuff
Here are the abilities we came up with: (a) bow & arrows, keen eyes, levitation spell (this character was dubbed "Legolas-san," briefly); (b) the blade which drinks light, consume essence (basically just a ranged attack), commune with spirits; (c) armor words, stone boar, super strength; and (d) dragon breath, first aid, super speed.

We applied the "breadth only" concept very strictly, more strictly that the text suggests: abilities never gave bonuses, merely permitted certain approaches to conflicts that otherwise wouldn't apply. For instance, the armor words could apply to whoever the spellcaster wanted (self for his own rolls, others for helping rolls), but didn't give a +1 to the actual rolls. This was soundly and enthusiastically received by players, and several instances were pointed out during play in which a "stack bonuses" approach would have undermined the important of helping and Trust.

All the "supers" as well as the boar became spells which only lasted for a single action - I took the instructions about this very seriously and was careful to remove the gamer-esque impression that one's super-speed is just, you know, always on and available for "no it didn't, I have super-speed" disputes.

Here's something I hope you consider seriously: get rid of the one-use instant-heal spell entirely. One player pointed out that it opened a can of worms for all kinds of very-powerful one-use spells, e.g. "Death spell" and similar, which would then lead to (# players)*3 one-use uber-powerful abilities in play. The standard healing abilities that you suggest in the text were perfectly suitable and were especially important in terms of helping. It especially strikes me that if a character is badly wounded or incapacitated, his or her rolls to heal are premium opportunities for bestowing or withholding helping rolls, and the one-use insta-heal diminishes the importance of this opportunity.

Final comments for this post
The Mountain Witch is a superior role-playing game, in alpha-stage. It ranks with The Greak Ork Gods, in my opinion, among the finest recent examples of "get to it and play" RPGs which - in my view - are the only solid chance the hobby has for actually appealing to people as opposed merely to gamers.

Tim, I fervently hope that you play your game multiple times over the next few months, to develop it into the powerful and highly-saleable item I think it can become. I'll post my second set of comments (narration, resolution, scenes/conflicts organization, IIEE, and damage) as soon as I can.

Best,
Ron

Hey, I got it done faster than I thought.

Here's the second set of comments based on our session. These concern more mechanics-based questions and suggestions.

Narration/resolution stuff
Narration went just fine, but then again, this group is comprised of veterans of (variously) The Pool, Trollbabe, My Life with Master, and Universalis. Everyone in the group is very comfortable with tossing narration-rights around, making suggestions, and respecting where the Buck Stops in any given instance. They also know how to utilize system-driven constraints - i.e., they don't try to wiggle out of a failed outcome via a half-assed narration.

We discussed the possible scope of narration, and decided to go with almost no Director Stance beyond what's usually, casually seen in role-playing. Typically, narrations stuck with the Color of the conflict outcomes, like where a given blow landed and that sort of thing. However, and more significantly, narration choices did work very well with the choreography of actions/helping, which I'll discuss in the next bit, so hold this thought.

Narration also proved to be a very important way to foreshadow Fates. One character succeeded in a conflict due to others' help, so the player narrated that his character was badly injured at first glance, but then was not - i.e. was protected against the Witch's magic. I also suggest allowing little "hey I wanna do something" scenes, which were always utilized for foreshadowing purposes - e.g. the bit in which one character buried the zombie corpses after the group had disposed of them, mentioned in the previous post.

We did come up with some questions about spending Trust points to take over narration.

1. Can the person who was supposed to narrate, if it wasn't the GM, buy it back? Perhaps with Trust points in the character whose player took it?

2. (this is independent of #1) Can yet another person, who has Trust in the initial character, buy it from the person who just bought it? And can that be contested by spending further points?

Narration-buying did become very significant at one point; it permitted a character to live through incapacitation, when he certainly would have been killed by the player whose character delivered the blow.

Scenes and conflicts stuff
I suggest providing really clear ways to understand and communicate how each of these types of "time" occur: chapters (the four you suggest), scenes, and conflicts. Ideally, a chapter may contain many scenes, and a scene may contain many conflicts. I suggest this because it allows Trust to be a risk-able resource across many conflicts (it doesn't renew), but also allows multiple renewal/alteration events (at the beginning of each scene) within each of the four chapters. As we only played for a single session, the number of scenes was necessarily small, and that led to final Trust scores that really weren't earth-shattering. To play the game to full potential, I'd like to have a good idea for designating when scenes start and stop (with potentially many conflicts within each scene), and to have scenes' beginning and ends be understandable within each chapter.

I mentioned already that player-called sub-scenes, just for small bits, are a good idea. It might be good to suggest in the rules that the GM can ask "hey, anything else?" before closing a scene and moving to Trust score adjustments.

Order and action stuff
To start with, a minor point: game-play produces outstanding fight choreography from the helping rules, because they involve all sorts of multiple actions. A lot of fun ensued as people offered suggestions about how it "would go," as others announced their actions and who they were and were not helping. These interactions were totally different from the confused and frustrated discussions often associated with "wait, I was here, so can I go there" debates.

Now for the trickier part. I found myself drawing dice diagrams very much like those I often use in Sorcerer. Imagine, if you will, a few scribbled names on a piece of paper, with arrows drawn to indicate ...

Early in the climactic confrontation
Obarumaru attacks the Witch
Saru attacks the Witch
Kenshu attacks the Witch's shadow
Shinji attacks Saru

Shinji helps Obarumaru
Saru helps Obarumaru
Saru helps Kenshu
Obarumaru helps Shinji
Kenshu helps Saru

Once we set up this diagram, though, the question became, who rolls in what order? Clearly, whenever a primary roll is made (e.g. Shinji attacking Saru), the helper's roll is made simultaneously, but that creates a bit of a temporal disconnect if (say) the helper had just been incapacitated. Either that disconnect is merely ignored, or it plays a big role - so which is it?

My suggestion is to set up all the little arrows, then roll everything simultaneously, one die for everyone who's doing something primary, as well as the helping dice (using different colors). Just apply absolutely all damage received no matter what, and let the narrators figure out who did what to whom when. This would be very much like Dust Devils, which has proven itself to me many times.

Oh! That gives me another sharp question: clearly, we were considering that a character could help as many characters as he or she wanted in a given conflict, in addition to his or her own action. Is that how you see it, Tim? Or was it "one action, helping or not," and that's it? Our way led to all that fun, swashbuckler-esque, hard-to-predict choreography I was talking about.

Here's another one:
The final round of the climactic confrontation (Saru was incapacitated in the above round)
Kenshu attacks the Witch
Obarumaru attacks the Witch
Shinji attacks the Witch's shadow

Shinji helps Kenshu
Shinji helps Obarumaru
Obarumaru helps Shinji
Kenshu helps Shinji

Given all this complexity and most especially the conflicts of interest under way, IIEE really became an issue. The order of resolution affects damage which affects subsequent resolution, which is a big deal. Ideally, I'd like to set up the diagram, then simply roll everything all at once, which would be a hell of a lot of fun.

More combat and damage stuff
Related to all of the above: does damage apply to one's Helping roll, if that is one's next action? If you do it all at once as I describe above, then it wouldn't and becomes a non-issue, but if you do it sequentially (character by character in some order or another), then this becomes a difficult issue, and that order becomes quite problematic.

Do critters attack on their own? In the above situations, do the Witch and the Shadow get attacks of their own? Or is it like Elfs, in which you only incur the possibility of damage from a foe if you enter into conflict with it? If it's like Elfs, then I also suggest that opponents might sometimes force "roll to survive" rolls upon player-characters, when the player-character is not attacking directly.

The problem is, if the foe does get an attack of its own, then you get into a tricky situation in which a character gets many, many attacks, which might not be a problem. I actually played it this way; the Shadow and the Witch did attack characters on their own, as well as having the "retaliatory" possibility of damage toward the characters who attacked them. I confess it was mildly confusing to run this way.

Final, minor point: it's kind of hard for a GM to wax a healthy PC, which I consider a feature. It's only when a little damage has been taken that the risks start to appear, and it's cool that helping makes such a difference, and that penalties do really hurt.

Final comments for this post
We hung out a little while after playing, talking about how much we liked the game. One person was talking about how one didn't have to be a gamer to grab and enjoy the game, and was wondering about why people played RPGs, and something struck me, and I voiced it: that it seemed we had become better friends after playing this game. The experience shared that quality with stuff like a really good pickup sports session, or a successful study-session for a test, or any number of other fairly absorbing, highly communicative, tangible-results activities.

They agreed. This game makes friends better friends. I can't think of any comparable or meaningful indicator of an RPG's quality.

Best,
Ron

Thank you Ron for that great write-up, it's incredibly helpful to me! I was waiting to respond to this thread until after I had a chance to playtest the game for myself (which I did last night), so that I could compare your experience with my own.

I'm glad you & your group had so much fun! I have to admit, I thought you were exaggerating when you said you and your group were better friends after playing, but my group had a similiar experience. I think part of it is that the Trust mechanic rewards cooperation. That was something my group commented on, at least.

Along with that, I agree that all the aiding & helping each other out allows for some cool choregraphy of fight scenes.

I actually didn't get to finish my adventure, so I still have to wait and see how my group deals with their respective Fates. I'm glad your group didn't have any trouble bringing out their Fates. Thanks for the suggestions about the player called mini-scenes and using success narration to foreshadow a Fate. I think those are great and I'll definitely include them in the text.

I encountered some of the same IIEE issues when all the characters were acting at the same time. I thought I could get away with just dealing with individual conflicts as they came up, but especially with all the helping out and coordinated actions, things get confusing.

Many of your concerns I'll address at more length in seperate thread over in the Indie Design board, but I'll address some of them now.

QuoteWe were a little confused by the character sheet notation for Trust.

Yeah, I'm sorry about that. It was meant to allow players to record how many points they gave others. I had actually already taken it off the character sheet in my revision (which I haven't posted on my website yet).

QuoteI could have sworn I'd read about starting values for Trust.

Actually, I don't think I ever addressed starting levels. I originally meant to say that all characters start with 0 Trust points for the first scene, but now I realize that doesn't really work well.

QuoteWe did come up with some questions about spending Trust points to take over narration.

1. Can the person who was supposed to narrate, if it wasn't the GM, buy it back? Perhaps with Trust points in the character whose player took it?

2. (this is independent of #1) Can yet another person, who has Trust in the initial character, buy it from the person who just bought it? And can that be contested by spending further points?

As of right now, no, players cannot buy back narration rights, and third-party players cannot buy narration rights that have already been bought.

QuoteDo critters attack on their own?

I intended it to be like Elfs, where you only risk danger if you actively engage in a conflict. (Note, I haven't played Elfs, I'm just following your example.) The way I played it, I would say to the players "This guys wants to attack you." I would then wait for the players to declare what they wanted to do, I would not force the attack on them. They would be free to engage the attack, run away, or whatever. Most of the time I would continue with an attack, but depending on how the PC reacted, I might change the critter's actions.

QuoteFinal, minor point: it's kind of hard for a GM to wax a healthy PC, which I consider a feature. It's only when a little damage has been taken that the risks start to appear, and it's cool that helping makes such a difference, and that penalties do really hurt.

That's definitely a feature, that's how I planned things to work out.
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Thanks again for the interest!

Oh, and PS, would you mind giving a brief summary of the adventure? I'm curious how you outlined events, what was the layout of the fortress, and how many scenes did you end up playing?

This game looks great! Glad to hear it's working out in playtest.  Keep polishing it up, Tim. Looks like you've got a winner.

Best,
Emily Care

Hello,

The session was hampered by its time constraints. Typically, I present a game Y, then we make characters for it, at the end of playing game W. But this time it was "game, characters, play" in a way that I typically don't prefer, and which always hampers the final stage.

Anyway, the first chapter included:

- make way across an icy saddle connecting two mountain ridges
- deal with a shallow valley full of frozen corpses, with the top layer actually being the zombie guys; overseen by Yuki-Onna from a distance

I decided the fortress had many sections, some of which were low (for defenders to stand on and treat as battlegrounds, many of which were connected by unguarded but very narrow stairs.

The second chapter:

- getting into the maze of courtyards, secondary buildings, halls, and other non-inner-sanctum areas of the fortress, mainly through a shockwave of the flying oni guys

This is the one I probably would have made a lot more nuanced and complex, dividing it into several scenes and hence giving opportunities to alter Trust, if there were more time.

The characters split into two groups, one of which was the Pact guy sneaking off on his own, and the other included the Vengeance guy trapping and isolating the remaining two player-characters. Hence the goals of the chapters (#3 = get Fates rolling) were already under way and under full power.

The third chapter:

- deal with three player-characters in conflict in a maze of corridors and halls
- the lone player-character had to deal with the doll thingie who was also using the frozen corpse of Yuki-Onna as a puppet; he did manage to defeat it and thus come to face the Witch

Time constraints led me simply to combine the above two things; when the multiple-player conflict seemed to be resolving, I decreed that the Witch stuff was happening right overhead, so merely collapsed the floor when violent events seemed to justify it.

Frankly, I think that was kind of lame, but I also think it was pushed a bit by the Pact player, who as I mentioned was actually weaseling out of his Fate obligations a little. If I'd dug in my fellow-Narrativist-player toes and called for a better background/issue from him, this chapter would have had a lot more oomph.

The fourth chapter:

- the two rather complex combat rounds described in the posts above. The Witch's Shadow become a separate protagonist, because it turns out that the one character's Fear was darkness (he'd already lost it when the Vengeance guy trapped him in a darkened room), and that player decreed that the Shadow was a whole monster on its own.

The epilogue, in which the four characters' "next step" was described by each player, including a little bit of in-character stuff.

Best,
Ron