[Cold Soldier] Core Mechanic
FetusCommander:
Hi Bret!
William and I did a short playtest of your game today, and we posted the audio of it on our podcast.
All in all, it went really smoothly and was a lot of fun. We played with your suggestions of the GM winning ties and the new weapon mechanics suggested in this thread (we didn't use this mechanic: "Numeric cards equal to or less-than the number of cards in your hand no longer count towards success in resolving a task").
Under the new rules it seemed pretty even, with the GM actually winning more than the soldier.
Some minor issues:
-It might just be because of our group's particular role-playing play style, but having the soldier unable to speak seemed to limit the role-playing options a little bit.
-Winning on ties seems like it tips the scales a little bit too much in the GM's favor.
-There were some areas in the text, like setting creation, where we weren't quite clear who was supposed to narrate certain events. It wasn't a major problem, but some more clarity as far as that might help.
Cheers,
Rudy
Paolo D.:
Hi guys! :-)
I'm following the development process and I'm really excited about this game.
A suggestion:
Quote from: FetusCommander on January 15, 2011, 02:50:39 PM
-It might just be because of our group's particular role-playing play style, but having the soldier unable to speak seemed to limit the role-playing options a little bit.
Bret, maybe you want to add some example to the game text about how the player could express the soldier's emotional state. Maybe some precise techniques too - I'm thinking on something like some Jeep techniques, but modified a little for a tabletop game... Do you know what I'm talking about? I can provide some links if you want to go deeper in this.
Bret Gillan:
Paolo, I do think that's a good idea. I've taken it for granted that any table can sit down and play a great game with a mute character. At my table it hasn't been a problem, but I go gaga for Ki-duk Kim movies (slow, contemplative stuff with mute protagonists) so I'm probably the odd person out. I don't know a lot about jeep so I would love some links.
Rudy, the actual play recording was fantastic and greatly appreciated. I am totally aware that my rules text is messy as written, so I'm sorry for the unclear text and muddling that occurred in your game. I'm hoping to give it a thorough rewrite soon and clear some things up. Also, I appreciate your enthusiasm. It's a definite motivator to know there are people besides myself who like this game.
In my AP experience I think there was a lot going on to encourage descriptions of the character, their appearance, what they see and how they behave, and also some inner-monologues. This is some stuff I'll have to incorporate into the text. One thing that stood out to me, though, is that as the GM you made a lot of demands on the character to speak. It's an easy conflict target - he can't speak? Okay, this NPC will be belligerent with him, demand a response, and then when he doesn't speak escalate things. It was a conflict you hit on a lot in your session. I don't think that's out of bounds, but a bit more diversity of NPC reaction or provocation would probably help. I am glad you guys had fun. It was fun for me to listen to the recording. I laughed and also died inside when the first task for the soldier was to go get the Dark Master some booze. So good job.
Paolo D.:
A Jeep technique I was thinking about is Inside-Outside. This and many other are explained at http://jeepen.org/dict/.
My point is: playing a mute character is, probably, something uncommon enough in rpgs to deserve some procedures about how actually play it. :-)
I would like to suggest you, as a start, to try to explain us how do you play it in first. How do you usually put evidence on the soldier's thoughts and emotions when you play Cold Soldier?
Maybe we could elaborate a procedure from that.
Paul DuPont:
I really like your basic concept for this game. It already inspired me to complete a 'casual' RPG design I was working on. Specifically the fact that the GM has a specific role to play.
Have you tried using mechanics that encourage the player to narrate complications for his character. For instance, in Fate, a player gets fate points when he describes a difficulty happening because of a character fault he has. Another example is the Token Effort system from "In Spaaace!" where the loser of the bid gets a token to compensate for his loss, thus increasing his ability to win next time. Of course, you would not do it quite the same way in this game, but sometimes it is nice to reward a player for failing. I thought that might make sense for a character who is an undead. The character might get a card for failing to avoid the masters control or some such.
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