It damn near killed me...
Paul Czege:
Hey Christoph,
Thanks. I've been sort of waiting to see some playtest reports, but I'm also toying with two ideas:
1. The Creating/Destroying/Consuming/Understanding spheres are actually my second conceptualization of the core pools for the game. I moved from my original conceptualization very early on in December, to align the game better with Thor Hansen's vision as the Developer. But now I'm thinking about trying to bring my original spheres and anchor points for traits (which weren't spheres) forward into the current version of the mechanics. The result would be a game that's closer to my own original aesthetic vision. But the challenge is that my original spheres have some conceptual overlap with what some of the special tokens now bring to scenes, and also, that I'm not sure the game would be improved by the original spheres.
2. I think the game would be improved if the "tell how your character's culture changes our modern world" phase at the end of play had a bit more structure to it, perhaps some creative constraints from the events of play, or closed goals or something. But I'm at a loss for how this might work.
What do you think?
Paul
Eero Tuovinen:
A random suggestion on the structure issue would be to employ a frame story: at the beginning of play create some simple characters and a simple modern setting with little detail, at the end show how their world differs from ours due to how their past diverged. Think Arabian Nights or such, a framing story can have powerful uses. You might even give the players some mechanical options for recalling the frame story back into play in the middle of the process for some mid-game elaboration before the final touches during the end-game. There could be some dramatic human destinies involved in the frame story, too. Something like whether she gets a job despite being a woman, whether he gets into the military despite being Welsh, that sort of thing.
Another potential form of structure could be some sort of arranged list of issues that is "shot down" by the players according to some scoring conceit at the end. This could even be fixed into a sort of simple choose your own path -type deal. Start with "Is there a Great Britain?", have a player answer that, move accordingly to "Independent Ireland?", "Is there even England as we know it?" and so on. End up with the stuff about gender equality and such, but only allow players to answer those if they followed certain paths in the tree.
Also, now that you're thinking of improvements: I think that I'd get a firmer grip on the game overall if you included some solid setting stuff to point to in play. Maps, say, that show tribal influence, important holy sites and such. A reading list, certainly. Would provide lots of flavour.
Christoph Boeckle:
Hi Paul
I'd really love to give the game a go, so if I do, I will indeed post a report.
About point number one, I can't say anything. For your second point, maybe looking at the end-game questions in Breaking the Ice may give some inspiration? I loved how the questions were easy to answer and spot-on, yet wouldn't necessarily have been things I'd have thought of myself.
For example:
Is England a constitutional monarchy? Why or why not?
When did rivalry with Scotland and Ireland start?
...
Similar to Eero's suggestion, without the fiddly mechanics!
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