[With Great Power] Justice League of America Summer Annual 2008
James_Nostack:
Colin, thanks for posting! It was fun to play with you, I hope you'll be back in town one of these days.
Some of what you're talking about is due to my choices as a GM. For example, in a typical Fight scene the GM won't hold half a deck of cards. Initially, the GM's cards are (approximately) 7 + 4 per involved player, to each player's 7. Yet because Fight scenes last a long time, they are dull as hell for non-participating players. So I deliberately tried to rope every player into every fight scene. I ended up with a ton of cards, and then Ralph and Gil totally bailed, so I could concentrate my firepower on other players. Yet even then, you and John pretty much managed to hold me off: after at least 45 minutes of play, neither of us could stage a decisive victory--I guess I could have ground you down with another 10-15 minutes of play, but then Ralph and Gil would have died of boredom.
Thank you for raising the "freeform traits" part of the mechanics. In theory I love this, because it's genre-appropriate that the Green Arrow is as valuable as Superman. But something about this bugs me; it's an issue I have in Capes, The Pool, and Dogs in the Vineyard--I feel that I could do all kinds of things if I don't mind twisting my traits into a pretzel to justify it. When this is combined with Director Stance--i.e., the player is allowed to invent pieces of the scene--it feels incredibly cheap to play this way. I really like open-ended traits; I also really like Director Stance; but I'm not sure I like them together.
Valamir:
I had a great time playing this game...I don't think I've ever not had a great time playing WGP. I took Hal Jordon from noble self righteous defender of the law to disenchanted cynic telling the Guardians to go Eff themselves to going all Punisher on Zod all in the compressed time frame of a Con session.
While the card mechanics could probably do with some streamlining and clean-up, I think the biggest problem with the session is trying to do a complete story arc in a single session. WGP will never shine as a one shot. The whole meta structure of the story arc is predicated on on the slow build up.
I've said this before elsewhere, but I'll mention it here. Never ever, use the cover two slots on the arc with one card method of compressing the story arc. I've never seen that work effectively. It changes too many rules at once, and completely disconnects the shifting in the balance of power from the fiction. Better would be to pick a spot on the arc to play...probably not even the first spot...and if the game advances a space or even two fine...but to try and compress the entire arc into one session I think makes the fiction too frenetic and confusing.
Zod having an overwhelming number of cards at first is as it should be. Players getting beat to snot and burning all our cards for little effect early on is as it should be. Over the course of the arc, the advantage shifts to the players and that is where WGP shines. Compressing that I think takes one of the game's great strengths and shows it in a very bad light.
James_Nostack:
Ralph, I agree that covering the arcs is confusing, but the same could be said for devastating one's aspects (rules change with each aspect devastated), and as discussed, the rules on "who draws how many cards and when" are already bristling with exceptions. I understand that the rules in With Great Power... work, but I'm not convinced that they're as smooth and as elegant as they could be. The mechanics have this jury-rigged feel to them. (This isn't meant as a knock on the Millers: it's definitely a fun game, just that IMO there's some room for improvement.)
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The other thing that this session really brought home to me is a problem, either in my GM'ing style, or in a bunch of indie games as a whole. It's the "Dudes-In-A-Scene" problem: here's a new scene, only one or two players are involved: if the scene drags on too long, other players will wander away (happened a lot during our game, which wasn't a problem with me given that it was a Con environment), or get bored (happened to me last time I was a player). IME, Dudes In A Scene is typical in games like Sorcerer and Primetime Adventures, and developed as a rejection of the Party-Party-Party approach intrinsic to Dungeons & Dragons and similar trad games.
The trouble with Dudes-In-A-Scene, for me, is that the most obvious fixes end up creating problems of their own. For example, when I have tried to hand off NPC's to audience members, they participate for a little bit... and then as the antagonism between the "Dude in the Scene" and the GM heats up, these NPC's generally go quiet. I don't know whether that's the spectator's reticence to screw with the GM's domain, or feeling out of one's depth being handed a strange set of conflicting motivations. Or, trying to keep all scenes short (say, 10 minutes or under) sometimes shortchanges these really deep scenes where you want to dig in and show off certain things about the PC, the world, the tension, whatever.
One suggestion, taken from Story Games, might be to have the other players narrate the outcomes of the PC's actions--basically turning them into GM's. I've also had some luck trying to have each player contribute to each PC, so there's always at least a little bit of creative investment. (It seems this is part of what Group Chargen accomplishes, though it might be possible to take this farther.) I'm also curious to know about letting audience members frame the scene...
Valamir:
I think WGP is ideally suited for handling the "dudes in a scene" problem using Flashpoint techniques.
i.e. Here are 3 dudes...they're doing stuff...they get in a conflict...stop...cut
Here are the other 2 dudes...its their turn to do stuff...they get in a conflict...stop...cut
Now everybody is in a conflict at the same time...just not the same one. And since every individual character fights the GM seperately it totally doesn't matter mechanically that the cards you're playing against the GM aren't for the same fight as the one I'm in.
Valamir:
Oh, I'll also note that I was one of those who wandered off a couple of times. I hate that when people do that in my games, so sorry. I was pretty wired on two much caffeine at that point and needed to move around...so nothing to do with being bored, I was still within earshot most of the time.
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