[zero-prep] playtest, jesus, where do I start
stefoid:
Isnt it funny when you have this idea of how things are going to go and then they just implode. I guess thats what they are talking about when they say any plan only lasts as long as contact with the enemy.
Here is the system
https://sites.google.com/site/zeroprep/files/ingenero.docx?attredirects=0&d=1
This is really a personal system designed to suit me and push the two playgroups that I have been involved with towards a style of play that suits me. We are talking about oooold school runequest players here. In theory they are up for trying new ways of roleplaying, but in practice there is a lot of inertia and decades old habits to break. And I suppose apathy. 'sure, we'll play your game -- it sounds like fun', but that doesnt extend to doing much more than a cursory scan of the rules and actually turning up. Now skipping to the end of the session briefly, as I am thinking, well that was completely fucked, and a player hands me his character sheet and says 'so again in two weeks?' (which is our normal game night -- we oscillate between board games of varying sorts and RPGs). And Im like, "what the,,,?" They want to keep going? But why? It sucked so bad! didnt it? And it dawns on me that they got what they expected, its just my own expectations that were dashed.
Anyway, I have to admit that I dont really like GMng -- I dislike being the focus of attention and having the main responsibility of being an old school GM. And at the same time, I dont like playing as an old school player and not having any significant say in the situations my character is involved in, nor ways I can resolve those situations except via someone elses overly crunchy reductionist rules. But if I want to introduce a new game, and I have done so a few times with PTA and IAWA, then the responsibility is with me to understand the rules and then of course thats me GMing, because you cant GM if you dont know the rules.
Hence me designing my own game that is theoretically heavy on all players participating in narration, relatively crunch lite but still allowing for strategising. Theoretically the payers are getting the fun of participating in narration and the GM isnt overburdened with responsibility, more of just a player with a different role. Theory is a great thing. I can see the allure of becoming an academic.
Anyway, so heres what happened:
First of all, there is setting the tone and the setting -- making sure we are all on the same page in terms of CA. OK, I mean the CA is shot from the start because only 2 of the 6 players were really interested in giving the game a shot on my terms, but even so, agreeing to tone is something. The tone chosen was 'beer fueled mayhem', and Im like, OK, this is a playtest, lets see where this goes. flippant tongue and cheek, fair enough.
And then they take 20 minutes to decide on the setting which is Steampunk Pirates. 20 minutes! We've only got 2.5 hours people! The starting locale is abord the Clockwork Parrot - a pirate ship on the aether and the current event is an impending raid on a British cruiser carrying some unknown but valuable cargo.
The background and long term goals goes pretty quickly - choose some backgrounds, a neat paragraph on that background. I was happy with that. An example:
Gunter: gunnery sergeant 4, medical officer 4, initial long term goal of becoming a financier. (player explained he wanted to leverage his booty to set up some kind of business to become independently wealthy) Cant remember the detailed paragraph of the background.
Selecting techniques - not so easy. People wanted to select 'skills' really, and I had to keep calling them on it -- 'no, agility is not a technique, a technique is a specific outcome -- agility does not describe an outcome'. After a while, we agreed that people could hold their technique buying points in reserve if they hadnt spent them all, and they could make up new ones on the fly as required. Or we would be there all night.
The first challenge phrase was 'A chance to shine'. Well, with an upcoming raid, thats pretty straight forward. I narrate that the captain calls a meeting to tell the crew that an informant has given word that a secret valuable cargo is being transported from the british docks on mars, and gives the route, enabling us to plan an ambush, and that with the death of the first mate in the last engagement, the position is up for grabs and that performance in the upcoming raid will go a long way towards getting the promotion.
Maybe the problem was that to get from the initial situation to the challenge scenario was in this case too straight forward. Was there anything else to narrate? Nobody had anything to say really. One player asked me how long did it take to get to the ambush point. 'um, as long as required for something you want to narrate to happen?" Players kept looking to me to say what happens next. People had these long term goals, but nobody had anything to say about them -- nothing to mix in to the story about their characters doing anything to achieve those long term goals or external event occurring that was related to a long term goal. Short term goals were easy to understand -- we were going to embark on a pirate ship to perform a raid in space. Things you might want to do on a raid were to impress the captain by leading a boarding party successfully, killing the opposing captain, or by coordinating the gun team s to fire effectively. One character devised a new type of harpoon gun and the aim was to successfully attach to the victim ship with it. Once you know the nature of the upcoming challenge, the short term goals arent a problem.
understanding long term goals... Goals are supposed to be there to help fuel ideas for the story phase. long term goals are supposed to direct the ongoing story more - As players are allowed to take the story in whatever directions they want, the existence of long term goals is supposed to make them want to take the story in directions that will enable them to elaborate on and achieve those long term goals in order to get the big reward points. But it didnt happen.
So without throwing much else into the mix, we move on to the challenge phase, although a fair amount of realtime has passed - 1.5 hours!!! I guess i just wanted more participation and it didnt happen. A combination of more effective long term goals and simply cutting to the chase when there was nothing more to add would have done the trick.
Challenge phase went OKish. I had to keep prompting if people wanted to throw body or soul into intended actions. They wernt used to doing stuff like that. Nobody employed an advantage technique. The gun guy achieved his STG of effectively running the gun crew such that they took down a main sail, and the engineers new harpoon gun was also used effectively, enabling a few short term goals to be achieved. One martial-oriented player got into a two onto one fight in the initial boarding party which turned out to a fairly boring affair of the 'I smack you, you smack me, I smack you' endurance fests until the mooks went down, but failed in his goal of killing the captain because someone got there first.
This was my problem I think -- mooks are there to be struck down mercilessly -- Nobody had a goal of 'kill namelss mooks', so I broke my own rule of 'pointless rolls'. What I should have done is narrate him -- a trained assassin by all accounts -- hacking his way through the hapless mooks, and then have break out the dice for the confrontation with the captain. Ah, lightbulb - the short term goals are there also to help the GM simple narration from dramatic conflict. So I also fell for the old school sim trap of rolling for every fucking tedious thing that might occur.
Another non-martial player had the STG of riflng their own captains cabin using the fighting as a diversion to see if there was any kind of personal information she could use. the background was that she was a gypsy type of character and the captain was partial to the occult, and armed with some personal info, she could increase her prestige in his eyes by feeding him that personal info at a latter date under the guise of fortune telling.
To be honest this stumped me. A STG cant be just handed to a player, they have to be tested and win to achieve it. But how? Not one of those smelly 'observation rolls' I really dont like. I decided that there was a locked drawer on the captains desk, so if she wanted to break into it, she could get the info she required, but she didnt want to, so I said tough luck basically. I threw a bone that there were initials carved on the captains pipe -B.A, when the crew only knew the captain by his surname. But she didnt get a goal reward -- could I have handled that better?
And that was about all we got up to. everything took much longer than I expected, and nothing engaging really happened.
Personally, I achieved no long no short term goals :(
Ron Edwards:
Hi Steffen,
I'd like to focus most of my comments in your first thread, but there's one thing I can provide as a personal take on your playtesting situation.
You stated that you were designing to push this group into different forms of play. I have never, to date, seen any successful attempt to do this. As far as I can tell, the only way to enjoy a particular form of play is to play with people who do, or will, like it as much as you do.
That goal is already broken even if one is using some published, functional game like Primetime Adventures or My Life with Master. If one is trying to playtest at the same time, then it's like spinning two dials at once - whatever happens, you won't be able to tell which moving component was responsible.
I specified that this is a personal take and can only point to years of observation and discussion; there is no fixed absolute in what I'm saying. Nor am I claiming that any group which enjoys, or is used to, playing one way cannot also enjoy playing another way. But if a group enjoys and is used to playing one way and is being pushed to play another way, for which there is little indication or a priori interest, then I hold little hope in the outcome.
Therefore I suggest that you review whether your phrasing about pushing is important, in this case. You know the people and I do not. Are you working with people who definitely show interest in playing the way we're talking about? Or are they merely being your pals and playing because you want them to?
Best, Ron
stefoid:
Hi Ron
Maybe guide more than push. There are 5 regular players, of those: one knows where Im coming from and actively wants to work with me, one doesnt really know where Im coming from but wants a change and is encouraging, two more are really apathethic about change but willing to see if it might be fun, as long as they dont have to work at it, and the last is just along for the ride.
My experiences with PTA was just : way too threatening. The whole bit where in rotation, one players has to setup the next scene and/or narrate an outcome. PTA was just to far away fro where the group is right now.
stefoid:
Quote from: stefoid on January 21, 2011, 05:59:19 AM
Another non-martial player had the STG of riflng their own captains cabin using the fighting as a diversion to see if there was any kind of personal information she could use. the background was that she was a gypsy type of character and the captain was partial to the occult, and armed with some personal info, she could increase her prestige in his eyes by feeding him that personal info at a latter date under the guise of fortune telling.
To be honest this stumped me. A STG cant be just handed to a player, they have to be tested and win to achieve it. But how? Not one of those smelly 'observation rolls' I really dont like. I decided that there was a locked drawer on the captains desk, so if she wanted to break into it, she could get the info she required, but she didnt want to, so I said tough luck basically. I threw a bone that there were initials carved on the captains pipe -B.A, when the crew only knew the captain by his surname. But she didnt get a goal reward -- could I have handled that better?
Sorry guys, but does anyone have comments on the above in particular
Callan S.:
Hi Steffen,
Have you done a write up of how you imagine an idealised session of play would go?
Asking if there's a way of handling it better seems to be asking us like we know the right way to play your game?
Quote
but she didnt want to
Why didn't she want to?
One thing I'd observe here is if she busts the lock and reads the info, things change. But if she says nah, then...nothing changes at all.
Perhaps when you decided to create a situation, as you did when you made up the locked draw, you need to ensure both yes and no choices result in a change, not just the yes choice. Even if the no result is something as clumsy as "Well, you ignore the draw, but as you look around you bump an oil lamp over and a fire starts in the captains quarters". As long as both "Yes I do it" or "No, I don't do it" result in some sort of change.
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