[Galactic] Aliens and Adamantium

[Glendower]

I downloaded, printed, and sat three players down to play test Matt Wilson's Galactic.  The premise really called out to me, and I'm pretty eager to play test anything by the same guy that created the awesome Primetime Adventures.

Kyle, Dan, Dave and I sat down to play the game.  They generated Captains, and there was some back and forth regarding the different archetypes.  Kyle and Dave's Captains ended up being pretty similar, in spite of an attempt to make their own unique combinations.  Virtues and Vices caused some annoyance, as they were really stuck for ideas, eventually just grabbing the examples out of the book.  I mentioned that Virtue could only be used a certain amount of times, and Vices could be used lots, but caused strain.  I then had to flip over several pages to find out how many times a Virtue could be used, and what the heck strain was. 

My explanation:  "Strain is ... bad. It makes bad stuff happen to connections."

Dave: "Such as?"

Me: "I... don't... know." I flipped through pages like mad.

Dan looked worried.  "You've read this, right?"

I had.  At least, I thought I had.  But we all agreed it cried out for a nice quick reference sheet.  A lot of rather important rules were all over the place. 

They settled down, created their connection, and then put together the crewmen.  We had some discussion on what crewman to make, and what abilities they had.  I explained that the crewman either helped or hindered conflicts in adventures, and that they can have any abilities that make sense for their position.  They understood that the crew were like SP 1 cast from Primetime, there to make the SP 3 cast member (the captain in this case) look good, or bring him trouble. 

Each crewmember had a dark secret they had to write out and hand me.  The secrets they handed me were pretty good.  I'd like to make this comment though.  I'm uncomfortable keeping a lot of secrets from players these days, and that seemed really at odds with the more open Indie systems I've become accustomed with.  I understand wanting to keep the secret, well, secret.  But personally, it would have helped a few players to work something juicy out with the other people at the table. 

From here we created the galactic map.  This was fun, though pennies can hurt if thrown with too much force across the table.  Secondary bouncing was also a problem.  We had one person have to re-throw about six times to get it onto the paper.  We might have all been incompetent.  It was a riot though, laughing at our terrible throws, adding circles to our choice of hex the penny touched.  Creating the map in this manner was a lot of fun, very hands on and generating a lot of conversation about the different areas, and what they might hold. 

We then build the factions.  This was another fun moment as each person build upon the faction web with one or two other organizations or societies.  The allied/Enemy dynamic was fun to play with, and soon our galaxy was bustling with six different factions.  This was another fun part to the game, with everyone contributing and suggesting different groups and organizations. 

Dave and Kyle could only think of one, so we had two less factions, but it looked pretty good none the less.  Already we saw some interesting alliances, the CSA (Caliban Spacefaring Agency - like a FAA in space) and the CLA (Colonial Liberation Army - a Militia group in favor of expansion and colonial self-governance) had an alliance.  This caused strain for another alliance the CSA had for the NCSD (National Caliban Security Department), as the NCSD was opposed to the CLA's militant expansion, and the negative effects it had on alien diplomacy.  All made up by the players and myself, in about 5 minutes of quick brainstorming. 

We rolled, and Kyle got high roll.  His captain was Malthorius Bellock, Astronaut, Scoundrel and Diplomat.  His freighter headed to the nearby world of....

Now we got to make a world.  In creating the world, we all got one descriptive on the planet's features.  I started with Humid, someone added primarily water surface, another mentioned one single continent, and Kyle added in the planet was rich in Adamantium, a dense and useful metal. 

Kyle asked for a Human vs Alien crisis, involving the NCSD (The security department) and a tribe of Aliens.

I rolled on the world adversity scale and got the max for a colony world.  With 2d6 and a 1d4, I got Kyle to list his 3 goals.

Get ore off planet 1d6
Keep source of ore hidden 1d6
Secure relations with natives 1d4

I rolled the adversity dice and counted up 9 hazard points. So far so good. 

The NCSD needed a GM character (GMC), I put together Captain Thomas Grey, an older warhawk with strong racist tendencies.  The Alien clan needed a face, I created Tillicik, the proud son of the tribal Chief.

Malthorius landed on a mining outpost and spoke to the Captain Grey.  The colony's supplies were stolen by native aliens, but they had captured one and were going to interrogate and execute it late on in the day. 

Kyle really stepped up on the premise, and began to convince Captain Grey to see this alien.  Dan and Dave played their crewmen, but were having some problems figuring out what it was they could do with them.  Dan decided to have his crewman Dres help out the captain by talking about what an "intimidating figure he was".  I decided to make this a conflict, as I wanted to see how the conflict stuff worked.

I had a lot of problems trying to figure out how much dice I was supposed to have.  The Captain's dice pool was fairly quick to determine, he was going to use his diplomacy skills to get by the captain, and use some gear from his pool to allow for the bribe. Dan was confused at the difference between the d6 and d8 assistance, and I had to flip a few times through the manual to find that information. 

I kept having problems figuring out what dice I rolled to oppose.  Had I read a little more closely, I would have seen that I needed to detail the GMC a little more to give him appropriate dice, then spend hazard to make him a little more formidable.  However these rules were difficult to find.  I ended up using the world adversity dice only.  3 dice vs Kyle's giant pile of dice.  I had no chance. 

I found myself wishing again for a quick reference sheet.  I found myself making one as we played, grabbing the useful information and putting it all into one location.  All the same, just finding the information slowed the game right down, which was too bad.

I then thought about switching to another captain, but there were protests.  "How do we keep up with 3 different stories at once?" asked Dave.  "The sheer amount of sudden switching to unconnected plotlines would confuse the hell out of me." The rest of the players agreed. 

I protested.  "But guys, this is the equivalent of having SP 1 characters from Primetime.  Your Captain is where you shine and take the reins!"

Dan and Dave's response was to the point:  "We got someone in the adventure.  That's enough.  Let's just do one adventure right now, and worry about doing 3 different adventures at once for a later session."

I reluctantly conceded to stick with Kyle's Captain, and we continued.

They met with the alien, kind of a spider-limbed dog.  I made the alien Tillicik, the Chieftain's son.  Malthorius and Tillicik began to try to communicate.  I went for another conflict here, saying that they either befriend or enrage the alien.  Again, due to not knowing how the heck to give myself dice, I was annihilated. 

They find a means of communicating using "handslaps and clicks" and I lay it out.  The aliens are upset at the colonists mining from their "Forbidden Mountain", and would be willing to show them better mining spots if only they would stop mining here.  They stole the supplies to slow down their mining of the mountain. 

Malthorius asks how much better, and the alien replies that chunks of the pure metal stick right out of the ground, as opposed to hidden in seams in the rock.  Kyle named the goals, so having them dangled in front of him was a great motivator.

After talking to Grey again and securing the alien to his custody (I didn't conflict as it moved things along nicely), he got the colony to stop mining and promised to provide a core sample of a better location.

They flew to the alien village, a network of spider webbing in the massive trees with oval huts interspersed.  There was celebration of the return of Tillicik, and the Chieftain himself listened to Malthorius' plan, which was to move the colony to an area of richer minerals, away from their forbidden mountain.  The Chieftain warned him that the Valley of the sun was the richest, but huge creatures known as "The sharptooth giants" lived in this valley, and ate all that intruded. 

Kyle looked at me.  "Is this a river valley?" I said sure.  "Is the valley large or narrow?"  I said it was narrow. "Could I destroy the exit to the valley, making it impassible?" I said he could, with the colony's explosives.

The next scene was Malthorius and his crew setting up the explosives as the Sharptooth Giants chased the Tillicik and his aliens past the explosion point.  Dave's character was helping set the explosives with the captain at observation distance.  I had one of the giants, essentially a big T-Rex, turn around and begin to head back.  One more conflict later, and the valley was safe from the Sharptooth Giants, with one giant buried under tons of rubble.  Again I was obliterated due to my puny dice pool, but by then it was late and I wanted to wrap it up.  The colony relocated to the new location, and high fives went all around. 

I really needed a nice summary of what to do when creating an adventure, including the dice to give the GMCs and one big chart showing what I can spend hazard on.  There's also a lot for the GM to do in a short succession, and I was a little overwhelmed at the amount of adlibbing required to connect the goals with the planet with the factions.  Happily I used the Primetime Adventures method of asking for help, and everyone contributed ideas to get me out of jams. 

So herein ends the first attempt at a playtest.  I have since read up on how conflicts are supposed to go (oops) and have a little better idea on how that works.  Again, having all that information in one single place is just critical, the severe stakes hazard costs were nicely tabled, but none of the other stuff about hazard was on that table. This forced me to read over pages and pages to find what I needed.

Here's an email from Dave, one of the players, on his thoughts.  Posted as a direct quote for a slightly different impression.

The initial concept of the game, along with the "board" layout and small back story (which is a little cliché, but still works great) gave me an initially good impression of the game. Most of the setup of the characters, factions, planets, etc went very smoothly and seemed well planned out. I'm not sure if examples of factions were given, but a small diagram showing a few factions with relational indicators might be nice if it isn't present, though we didn't seem to have any problems with this portion of setup.
Once we got to playing, especially when we've recently been playing games like Primetime Adventures and other such games, that we must have been putting too much detail into our descriptions/actions. Even just sticking with one captain's adventure on a planet it took us about an hour and a half. Granted some of that was learning time.

I realize that we were supposed to be switching off after every conflict. I'm concerned that things could get confusing very quickly. Consider both the rate at which contacts are gained, and the fact that each person contributing to the game is playing multiple unique characters. In our situation, with 3 players, that's 3 characters each you're supposed to keep track of, at least if you're going to contribute anything meaningful to them. I think that with some more time and experience with this game we would naturally streamline things a little and get into a smooth routine, but for people just trying to pick it up it might be a little overwhelming at first.

Dave's email ends here.  And so there you have it, my group's first experience with Galactic.  There's some interest to play it again, and we might do extactly that!

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Jon:

Thanks for trying it out. I'm impressed that you dove right in and played an adventure. I'm imagining it (and myself playing it) as the sort of game where the GM creates the stuff in between games. If you're coming up with solid stuff on the fly, that's really excellent.

I'll try and address a couple of your concerns.

My explanation:  "Strain is ... bad. It makes bad stuff happen to connections."

Strain doesn't mean connections themselves get hurt. Strain has to do with the relationship between your character and the connection. If you keep asking them for help all the time, you hurt the relationship. You can reduce strain by choosing goals that the connection has a stake in.

Dan looked worried.  "You've read this, right?"

And you tell Dan that this is a playtest doc, and of course it's hard to find things in it, and he's not allowed to give you any lip, ever, about anything, gaming or not.

Creating the map in this manner was a lot of fun, very hands on and generating a lot of conversation about the different areas, and what they might hold.

Oh, good. I've had differing feedback, but I think it's fun too. Credit for the idea goes to Dev P. I just added a lot of stuff to what he suggested. Similar problems with the bouncing. I was even considering selling mini poker chips to go along with the game, as I bet they wouldn't bounce as much as coins.

I had a lot of problems trying to figure out how much dice I was supposed to have.

Here I'm taking a cue from Dust Devils. I only steal from the best. If it's a specific GMC, they have traits just like captains. If it's mooks and stuff, you just roll 3d6 plus the adversity dice. In this particular world, it would have been 3d6+2d6+1d4.

In some cases conflicts against mook characters will probably start out with more dice against the character, but generic GMCs can't resort to additional archetypes. Play may prove me wrong, but I think that makes it balance out in favor of specifics.

I realize, after talking to another playtester, that there might be something missing from the playtest doc, and after I told 'em, another group had a lot of fun with it. That bit about planetary traits in adventure building is supposed to give you re-roll checkboxes that supporting players can use during the game. I'll explain this in a little more detail in the DED forum.

I'm concerned that things could get confusing very quickly. Consider both the rate at which contacts are gained, and the fact that each person contributing to the game is playing multiple unique characters. In our situation, with 3 players, that's 3 characters each you're supposed to keep track of, at least if you're going to contribute anything meaningful to them.

I'm watching for feedback like this, but I wanted to mention that a lot of groups seem to have picked up this style of play without a game that demands it. Trollbabe, for instance, allows characters to be at opposite ends of the world if the players so choose. Does the additional layer of supporting characters in Galactic make this a lot harder? We'll find out.

Thanks again for playing. I really appreciate it. Going to start up a game today myself!

-Matt