[Keen Edge of History] First Time Play
Cliff H:
Keen Edge of History is the game I created for this round of The Ronnies, and wouldn't you know that two days after I submit it a combination of work travel and lingering holiday vacation sapped me of half my regular gaming group. So, instead of cancelling our session, I asked the guys remaining if they'd indulge me in a little playtesting. They did.
You can find the rules for the game here: http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/the-keen-edge-of-history.
The game had a few constraints on it. We meet weeknights because between young children, work responsibilities, and general busy social schedules my group has a hard time finding free weekends. But getting together after work in the middle of the week works just fine. Because it's a work night, however, we only have a couple of hours to give the game, sometimes literally. On a good night, everyone's there close to on time and we get about 3 hours in. Last night was not one of those nights. In addition to one person (of two) showing up a little late, we were further delayed because the host wanted to finish watching the new Captain Marvel/Superman team up movie. So, left with two hours, we set out to learn the game, make characters, and play an adventure.
Cliff H:
Character Creation
I was a little apprehensive about this part, since the two players I had were good, but the sort that tend to rely on the system and the GM to lead them along in an RPG, while this particular game starts with, effectively, "write a story." There was a period of silence as they worked the keys, but I was pleasantly surprised at what they came up with.
One made a sword of obsidian with a keen edge that hungered for flesh and the ability to bend shadows around it. It also, for some reason, gifted its wielder with the ability to influence birds. This was a Prize sword; would be wielders needed to brave a shadowy cave in the mountaintop roost of a roc in order to lay claim to it for a generation.
The other sword was forged over years of time by a man condemned to a bloody arena. As a smith, he was exempt from fighting and instead maintained the gear as a slave, but he watched all of his family die on the sands one by one. Over the years, he collected fragments of the broken weapons and forged them into a short sword locked inside a gauntlet, and hammered every blow with hate. This sword was instrumental in overthrowing the monarch and seemed to develop a taste for delivering a single, decisive blow. It also served as an effective rallying point for rebellions and aided in the fomenting of such movements by letting the wielder move about unnoticed.
These are stripped down from the text I got, which contained more specifics in terms of names and places. I think the fact that they were typing on laptops as opposed to scribbling on paper encouraged a little more verbosity. What was encouraging, however, was how readily they took to the idea and how they were able to come up with concepts for their characters that worked perfectly within the confines of the game with no guidance from me beyond the initial explanation of the game.
Sagas
That is, until we got to writing the swords' sagas. Here, I clearly need to update the original text, because both players wound up writing usable sagas, but kept them broad and general, like their initial legends, instead of homing in on specific, individual deeds credited to the blade. So Vengeance (the actual name was cooler, and in Latin, and I can't remember it right now) wound up with a saga that read something like: "Time and time again, it has been found in the hands of a general leading a popular revolt against tyrannical rulers, only to slip into the mists of history when the regime is overthrown." We can make use of that, for certain, but it lacks the specific feel I was shooting for in this subset of the blade's history. Given that I got something similar for Shadows (again, not the actual name), I was failing to communicate something.
We figured out what that was collectively. Sagas should be a few sentences long, but each sentence should be a specific accomplishment. Better still, if these sagas specifically mention a sweep of time, it goes a long way toward establishing the feeling that the sword is old and has been around the block a few times. So instead of "time and time again," you get: "When the casteless outcast Kor lead a popular uprising against the decadent King Ehndrin, he lead the revolt with Vengeance in his hand. Ten generations later, Kor's own descendant, King Bhelan, faced overthrow at the edge of Vengeance in a revolution that shattered the dynasty and placed a humble monk in charge of the people. The kingdom would know peace for two centuries, but when the Chantry of the Maker turned from a benevolent rule to one of oppressive tithes and excess, they too fell before an enraged populace lead by a low-born general wielding Vengeance."
Spending Points
The math portion of the generation session didn't take long. You don't get a lot of points to spend, and the ambient and invoked abilities of the blades were self-evident; no one needed to comb through his legend looking to tease out details into a game effect. The one oddity I noticed was that the Record attribute given to Wanderer blades is useless at level 1. You need to buy it up to level 2 in order to make it do anything. Still, it's arguably the best of the three special attributes, so an increased cost might be warranted. There's just something about the idea that a player could spend points on something and get nothing out of it that doesn't sit right with me. Incidentally, that's exactly what happened initially.
Both players spread their points out, so they had ratings of 1 and 2 in a bunch of things. This undoubtedly had an effect on play.
At this point, their blades were done. The process took about 45 minutes, which is long for something designed as a pickup game. However, given that you keep the same sword from adventure to adventure, this is a time cost that you only pay once. I also wonder if the actual implements had anything to do with gen time. Computers seemed to encourage longer passages, but at the same time these players certainly type faster than they write. Given that one of my players offered to reach out to some people who he thought would be interested in this kind of game for a second playtest session, I'll have some opportunity to compare pen vs keyboard.
Hands
Where making the blades took the better part of an hour, I was very happy to see that making hands took about 10 minutes, and half that time was me explaining what they were and how they worked.
What struck me as interesting was how the two players approached hands. Vengeance's player created a quick story and identity for his hand. He was Camrin, a young farmboy who recently lost his family and came across Vengeance quite by accident. Shadow's player didn't bother; his hand was there to serve the sword's legend and that was all. History wouldn't remember his name.
Shadow's hand started with a Worth, which took a little back and forth to design. He was initially dismayed at how specific it had to be. His first idea was the ability to infiltrate communication networks. I said it was a good start but he needed to specify what kind of network; he eventually chose carrier pigeons, to tie into Shadow's gift, but he despaired that it was too tightly focused to see much use.
Cliff H:
Quest Design
With characters done, we moved into the quest of their generation. To save time and get the ball rolling, I provided the ultimate threat: a necromantic king was driving a horde of risen dead across the land and threatening to strip the life of everything in it's path. Pretty standard stuff, but with everything else being new, I wanted something familiar for them to latch onto.
The players rolled their Bard, with Vengeance making no saga declarations, and Shadows opting to declare his arc for Vengeance's saga. That bonus put him well over the top, and he won editorial authority over the first arc. Working together, they decided that the first step in their quest was marshaling an army of their own. They would start in Camrin's kingdom, where the king had begun sending resources to the necromancer general. A little more discussion had those resources become people, lead off in great marches to be slain and raised. They decided the prisoners had not yet been sent, but were still being gathered and held at the castle.
At this point, they declared themselves done, so I turned them loose on the village, and we discovered they weren't done.
As I said before, these two players are the sort that are used to more guidance from the session's plot, usually written by someone else. They created the situation, but didn't create a hook for themselves. They had a goal, but couldn't seem to figure out what to do to get started. So I threw in some more details specific to the village they put themselves in, with guards looking for any excuse to clap people in irons and send them to the castle. That lead to a little bit of motion, and then they drew up short.
"How are we going to team up?"
"We'll assume you do."
After some jokes about meeting in a tavern and receiving the swords from a mysterious cloaked man who bids them go on a quest, they got underway in earnest.
Cliff H:
Actual Play
Things kicked off with Shadows intercepting a carrier pigeon sent from the village. He was delighted to learn that since he could script the arc, he was free to make carrier pigeons an important part of the guards' communication, and thus ensure his ability would see use. They discovered that the guard stations were sending census numbers back to the castle, likely so that the king had an idea of how many people he could sacrifice to the necromancer general. They decided that was enough to inspire revolt, but didn't think to keep the note.
They marched back into town and immediately began sowing the seeds of discontent. Vengeance's hand was very much Knight oriented, and took the direct approach right away, standing in the village green and railing against the king and the local guard. Shadows worked the crowd from within, beginning whisper campaigns that got them murmuring reinforcing points.
It took a tiny bit of adjustment, but the two quickly got the hang of the hand attributes and narration points, and while I did have to ask them to provide outcomes for their actions for almost the entire first scene (they kept looking at me to provide that), this too eventually fell away. Pretty quickly they dictated that between the two, they got the attention of both the crowd and the guard, but that the guards were separated into two groups by the gathered villagers. When the guard finally moved on Vengeance, a quick roll left him with enough narrative points to say: "They put their hands on me, and I kill the hell out of all of them." He took their weapons, armed the biggest among the gathered, and they stormed the guard station. Shadows, in the meantime, grabbed a uniform, threw it on, and ran ahead of the crowd as if he were a guard under attack. They let him in just ahead of Vengeance's mob.
What followed was a grand melee, and while it was a little more complicated than straight up conflict resolution, it flowed easily enough. Again, my players were a little disoriented by the fact that there were no target numbers or hit points, but when Vengeance learned he could describe taking a blow however he liked as long as he had the narration points, he took great delight in toughing through a pommel strike to the head in true action movie style. The fight took a few rounds, and ended with our heroes executing the guards, burning the guardhouse down, and then using their excess narration points to not only rally the villagers, but cement their loyalty to Vengeance. They weren't fighting for their village anymore; they would fight for and follow him.
One brief overland trek later saw them at the castle gates. They snuck inside the courtyard, then split into two teams. Vengeance began an assault on the walls from the inside, while Shadows took advantage of the confusion to slip inside the castle proper in search for the king. We handled this by giving each player his own task with its own threat rating, and said they couldn't use narration points to help one another until they were again rejoined. Despite running two scenes simultaneously, the narration point mechanic made sure we could make continual quick cuts between both characters on an ongoing basis. I'm not sure how this would hold up with a larger party though.
Vengeance had horrible, almost statistically impossible luck with dice, so his assault was continually plagued with setbacks and casualties. Shadows, on the other hand, lied and snuck his way through to the king's chamber almost unopposed. The end of the evening saw Vengeance's forces huddled just outside the castle gates surrounded and taking losses, while Shadows ended a duel with the king by throwing him out a window, which he specified with a narration point overlooked Vengeance's men. Vengeance killed the king (making sure the monarch landed on the sword, with his face), and used the body as a psychological assault on guards. From above, Shadows, still in a guard's uniform, shouted in that the king was dead and all was lost. The men surrendered, and the arc concluded.
Advancement
We rolled bard again, and since the arc dealt with Vengeance's saga, it was no surprise he came out on top. Still, there were only two players, so it's not like anyone had to scrounge for details. Vengeance of course took the tale of the popular uprising to add to his saga, while Shadows took the infiltration of the castle in the heat of battle for his advancement. As this was all we played, there was no opportunity to test how this works over time.
Analysis/Obervations
Naturally, playtesting revealed a few shortcomings of the system, but it also highlighted some things that went surprisingly well, and some other oddities that were neither good nor bad, but merely interesting.
First, the bad. I think there needs to be more guidance on arc creation in the text, especially for players used to pre-written scenarios. My players put together a fine mess of a situation that required their attention, but they had no clue how to engage it once they did. There's nothing mechanical necessary here, but clearly more explicit detail on what should be included in a quest arc is required.
Second, the swords themselves didn't have as much influence as I expected. This might be because the swords my players made were spread thinly; they wanted to make sure they tried everything. But because of this, they had ratings of 1 in almost everything. Despite the claim of the game, it really was the hands doing most the work in this playtest.
There were also a couple of occasions where the back and forth narration lead to some good places, but the player couldn't take the desired action because it didn't fall under the aegis of the attribute he rolled. For example, Shadows rolled feint to pretend to be a guard, and made his way to the king's chamber. I used one of my own narration points to say there were guards posted outside. He countered with a quick backstab and throat slit. Since this was by surprise and from behind, it fit Feint perfectly fine. But when I then said the doors were sealed, he wanted to cut them open with his sword, claiming they were made of wood and thus vulnerable to its keen edge. That sounded perfectly cool, but that's an Arms action, not Feint. Instead, he called the king out, claiming that assassins had killed the door guard and that he wasn't safe. That was a Feint action. The thing is, there was no good reason for him not to cut open the doors, and it was a pretty cool visual, but the rules don't support slipping back and forth between attributes right now. I'm not sure how to tackle that.
I also realized early on that anything worth rolling needed a Threat rating in order to be worthwhile. Without that, characters could walk all over everything. In addition, I had no parameters for assigning die pools to myself, but their need became obvious quite early as well. Without opposing rolls and narration points of my own, the characters can't ever fail. It might take them several rolls to overcome a high Threat, but unless something is actively working against them somehow, success is just a matter of time.
On the flip side, Threats as damage capacity was quite freeing, and made tracking battle awesomely easy. We were able to run it all in our heads, and people were spending 99% of their time thinking about what to do and how to describe it rather than calculating pools and looking over modifiers. Handling time was supremely light, and resolution was simple. The hot potato version of narration, once we all got the hang of it, facilitated a flow of action that kept everyone involved, and keeping the number of details wedded to narration points ensured that the opportunity to talk and act moved around the table quickly and frequently. We used the net narration version only once, when individual actions weren't as important (it was something of a montage sequence), and that went as fast as you'd expect, but felt no less satisfying. I imagine hot potato is going to be the default narration method though. The extra detail seems to add a lot to the play experience.
As I noted earlier, low ranked sword abilities don't influence the game very much. I'm not sure how well sagas will correct this over time; we didn't have an opportunity to test that. I also noticed that my players were stingy when it came to their expendable resources. No one wanted to use their invoked ability, since you can only use it once per quest, and there was a lot of reluctance to spend saga points. I have a feeling this is more a knee jerk reaction to wanting to hold onto options, and that it might fade with greater understanding of the game, but it was something I noticed on a number of occasions. Even when I reminded players of their available options, I'd get a head bob and a drawn out "Yeeeaaahhhh..." in reply.
Finally, I noticed something unexpected. My players really did play their swords. Even Vengeance, who had created an identity for his hand, by and large ignored the human and focused on the sword. They did plenty of talking and lots of non-combat activities, even some good amount of logistical management, but they way they spoke was different from other games. Instead of speaking as a character saying the lines, their tendency in this game was to relate everything as if it were a story of something that already happened. When Vengeance stood in the village green and railed against the king, he didn't deliver the actual speech, but described its contents, and then how people reacted to it. The same for Shadow and his whisper campaign. Both of these players have been with me a long time, and they know I'd normally require the actual delivery, but they didn't offer it this time, and I didn't feel the game needed it. Because they were taking up the mantle of also describing the outcome, their focus shifted, and while this did depersonalize the character play, it also felt appropriate. People, the hands, are not the focus of this game, and swords don't go through personal angst.
As a closing note, while the hands didn't get a lot of direct character play, their general attitude did come through quite a bit in the actions they took. The hand Shadows had in this quest turned out to be a devious man who got through most situations by lying and tricking other people to do what he needed. Camrin, via Vengeance, on the other hand, was brutish. He always went for the frontal assault and looked to overpower the opposition. Where this becomes important is that I think it is through hands that swords in this game can really begin to feel ancient. Because even hands who don't have a name or personality do, through virtue of their mechanics, influence the feel of play, changing them every quest will almost certainly give an impression of time's passage. And when remembering quests from before, it will be in the context of a different hand, a person who lived long ago and is no longer here. But the sword is.
Troy_Costisick:
Heya Cliff,
Nice report! Very thurough :)
Quote
There were also a couple of occasions where the back and forth narration lead to some good places, but the player couldn't take the desired action because it didn't fall under the aegis of the attribute he rolled. For example, Shadows rolled feint to pretend to be a guard, and made his way to the king's chamber. I used one of my own narration points to say there were guards posted outside. He countered with a quick backstab and throat slit. Since this was by surprise and from behind, it fit Feint perfectly fine. But when I then said the doors were sealed, he wanted to cut them open with his sword, claiming they were made of wood and thus vulnerable to its keen edge. That sounded perfectly cool, but that's an Arms action, not Feint. Instead, he called the king out, claiming that assassins had killed the door guard and that he wasn't safe. That was a Feint action. The thing is, there was no good reason for him not to cut open the doors, and it was a pretty cool visual, but the rules don't support slipping back and forth between attributes right now. I'm not sure how to tackle that.
I don't see how this is a bug in the system at all. I see it as an instance where the player was learning the system. The brute-force/bust-my-way-in method does not fit the character of Shadow at all, nor does it fit his motivations and actions up to that point. The fact that he had to use trickery and deceit to get what he wanted absolutely fell in line with the expectations of that character up to that point. To me, it looks much more like a player slipping back into bad gaming habits where the old ADnD skill of Bend Bars/Lift Gates was the default solution to most problems.
I'm not sure I would be too quick to change this feature of your game. It seems to be reinforcing the very kinds of storytelling techniques the players initially wanted to employ. And sometimes, that's what a system does- it helps to consistenly enforce the vision of play even when the players find the system inconvenient or simply forget that it was there.
Peace,
-Troy
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page