Interrogation
A couple of weeks ago I ran some sessions of Criminal Element. A good time was had by the players but, more importantly it was a solid three sessions of playtest. After each session I grilled the play group on a myriad of elements of the game and the way it played. What I discovered through this batch of playtesting was pretty interesting.
The first session ran really well, as you could read in the play notes for them that I posted here earlier in my LJ. Setup was easy to run through, characters were quickly assembled, and everyone felt like they had a confident grasp of who their character was. We wrapped up that session with a little gameplay. I introduced the crew's handler, a woman simply called the Duchess. She gave the group their job and there was a little bit of time spent on the characters setting up their interactions and interplay. All in all a good session.
The second session is when things went completely off the rails. The item that the crew was trying to steal was being transported on a bullet train, so I decided to open the session with the crew at the train station where the bullet train would dock. I thought it would be a five minute scene of the crew looking at some of the security at the station and getting a good look at the train itself before they pulled of the job the next day. This was, as you could possibly predict, completely wrong.
It might have been that the players were simply a bit punchy. One of the players had gotten little sleep and was a bit off the chain. In any case, the five minute scene ate up at least an hour of play time. The players just sort of wandered around the train station, sort of interacting with things but not really. After a lot of flailing around trying to pick up the pace I finally just jumped to the next scene, one where two of the crew members were trying to get their hands on some heavy equipment.
That scene and the following went by well enough and by the end of the session we had gotten everyone on to the train. I decided that I would wrap the session just before the heist itself takes off, so I had the players wander through the train for a minute and such. I ended the session with one of the players, an undercover Interpol agent, sitting in the dining car and waiting for someone. A woman walked past him, recognized him, and looked down at the character and said his name, something that no one outside of Interpol would know.
Next session we picked up with that same character. The player decided that he wanted to use his character's "False Identity" trait to play off that he wasn't the person that the woman thought he was. I wasn't sure about it, it seemed silly that a woman that obviously recognized him would suddenly forget who he was or whatever. I had also wanted to use this NPC to introduce more of the undercover cop stuff for the PC. In any case, I had thoughts of the indie game mantra "say yes or roll the dice" pop in to my mind, so I set opposition and we drew cards. The player won the draw and the woman failed to recognize him and walked off.
From there on the game went into the heist proper, which pretty much just sang. Things moved at a breakneck pace, combats were had, Meltdowns were activated, characters were shot. The end of the session had the players gasping for air. I've gotta tell you, that's a nice feeling.
All in all though, this is the stuff that I took away from that particular series.
Pacing: should there be some sort of explicit statement from the Director that says "this is what this scene is about"? The game requires a fast pace to work well, so I find myself wondering if the Director should set out exactly what the goal is in each scene explicitly to the players rather than just having an idea of a scene goal like I talk about in the director's notes part of the PDF.
Glass NPCs: Man did my NPCs die quick! Without a Drama Point like mechanic to protect important characters from harm, they just get torn apart during combat. My thinking on this is to simply give important NPCs a bunch more wound points to help out with that. My other thought was to let the Director burn players' metldown points as a sort of "backdoor" drama point mechanic, but that's not a solution that I'm too comfortable with. I think that it takes the focus away from what's important with meltdown points in the first place.
Going for cover: Is fun and easy, but without it a character is really dead. I'm thinking about ripping the active dodge rules out of Sorcerer to help out with this. A character can just take the two cards on his dodge but still get his full action like normal, or he can use his action to make a dodge draw using an appropriate trait. Going for cover would add a +1 draw bonus to all defensive actions, active or passive.
Body armour: I'm also thinking that this needs to be a little more solidly handled mechanically. As it stands right now, the only time a bullet-proof vest is helpful is if you use the DS "Kevlar", which you can only use once per scene. I'm thinking that I want to have armour work like an Advantage Draw, giving characters an additional card on their draw for defending themselves. This lets those passive Dodge draws not suck so much as well as gives bonuses to characters that put some forethought into getting a kevlar vest.
This also would mean that the mechanical weight of such a thing, an item that gives a +1 draw bonus to appropriate actions would have to be carried out across the board. Certain weapons, tools, what have you could give you the bonus if those items are good enough. For any of these items to come in to play though, a character would either have to make a successful requesition draw or spend the right number of DP.
And the biggest issue is Stakes. I've been playing in a whole lot of Shadow of Yesterday lately. It's a fun game, well written, with great rules. It also has very explicit stake-setting. Is this something that I should use in CE? My gut reaction is to say "no". Let me clarify by saying that I want explicit, I want the palyers to say exactly what they want, but I just don't tihnk the game lends itself well to narrative control. It just doesn't work right, as the mechanics aren't meant to give a player narrative control, but to give a character in-game power, if that makes any sense.
Using an example from the gameplay above, the player tried to have his character go unrecognized by an NPC. I think what went off the rails here was the use of explicit stakes. If there was something more along the lines of stakes negotiation maybe it would have worked better. I wonder if it would have ran smoother if I had done the following:
Me: "Alright, so picking up with the end of last session... The Greek is staring down at you with a puzzled expression on her face. She mutters your real name under her breath."
Player: "I want to use my False Identity trait. I want to tell her that she's mistaken, that I'm not who she thinks I am, and for her to move on."
Me: "Well, sorry man, but she does recognize you and there's no undoing that. Maybe on a successful draw you can use False Identity to not draw attention to yourself while you talk to the Greek."
Well, that's all I have for now. I'm exhausted after a six day work week and I think I'm going to take a nap.
The first session ran really well, as you could read in the play notes for them that I posted here earlier in my LJ. Setup was easy to run through, characters were quickly assembled, and everyone felt like they had a confident grasp of who their character was. We wrapped up that session with a little gameplay. I introduced the crew's handler, a woman simply called the Duchess. She gave the group their job and there was a little bit of time spent on the characters setting up their interactions and interplay. All in all a good session.
The second session is when things went completely off the rails. The item that the crew was trying to steal was being transported on a bullet train, so I decided to open the session with the crew at the train station where the bullet train would dock. I thought it would be a five minute scene of the crew looking at some of the security at the station and getting a good look at the train itself before they pulled of the job the next day. This was, as you could possibly predict, completely wrong.
It might have been that the players were simply a bit punchy. One of the players had gotten little sleep and was a bit off the chain. In any case, the five minute scene ate up at least an hour of play time. The players just sort of wandered around the train station, sort of interacting with things but not really. After a lot of flailing around trying to pick up the pace I finally just jumped to the next scene, one where two of the crew members were trying to get their hands on some heavy equipment.
That scene and the following went by well enough and by the end of the session we had gotten everyone on to the train. I decided that I would wrap the session just before the heist itself takes off, so I had the players wander through the train for a minute and such. I ended the session with one of the players, an undercover Interpol agent, sitting in the dining car and waiting for someone. A woman walked past him, recognized him, and looked down at the character and said his name, something that no one outside of Interpol would know.
Next session we picked up with that same character. The player decided that he wanted to use his character's "False Identity" trait to play off that he wasn't the person that the woman thought he was. I wasn't sure about it, it seemed silly that a woman that obviously recognized him would suddenly forget who he was or whatever. I had also wanted to use this NPC to introduce more of the undercover cop stuff for the PC. In any case, I had thoughts of the indie game mantra "say yes or roll the dice" pop in to my mind, so I set opposition and we drew cards. The player won the draw and the woman failed to recognize him and walked off.
From there on the game went into the heist proper, which pretty much just sang. Things moved at a breakneck pace, combats were had, Meltdowns were activated, characters were shot. The end of the session had the players gasping for air. I've gotta tell you, that's a nice feeling.
All in all though, this is the stuff that I took away from that particular series.
Pacing: should there be some sort of explicit statement from the Director that says "this is what this scene is about"? The game requires a fast pace to work well, so I find myself wondering if the Director should set out exactly what the goal is in each scene explicitly to the players rather than just having an idea of a scene goal like I talk about in the director's notes part of the PDF.
Glass NPCs: Man did my NPCs die quick! Without a Drama Point like mechanic to protect important characters from harm, they just get torn apart during combat. My thinking on this is to simply give important NPCs a bunch more wound points to help out with that. My other thought was to let the Director burn players' metldown points as a sort of "backdoor" drama point mechanic, but that's not a solution that I'm too comfortable with. I think that it takes the focus away from what's important with meltdown points in the first place.
Going for cover: Is fun and easy, but without it a character is really dead. I'm thinking about ripping the active dodge rules out of Sorcerer to help out with this. A character can just take the two cards on his dodge but still get his full action like normal, or he can use his action to make a dodge draw using an appropriate trait. Going for cover would add a +1 draw bonus to all defensive actions, active or passive.
Body armour: I'm also thinking that this needs to be a little more solidly handled mechanically. As it stands right now, the only time a bullet-proof vest is helpful is if you use the DS "Kevlar", which you can only use once per scene. I'm thinking that I want to have armour work like an Advantage Draw, giving characters an additional card on their draw for defending themselves. This lets those passive Dodge draws not suck so much as well as gives bonuses to characters that put some forethought into getting a kevlar vest.
This also would mean that the mechanical weight of such a thing, an item that gives a +1 draw bonus to appropriate actions would have to be carried out across the board. Certain weapons, tools, what have you could give you the bonus if those items are good enough. For any of these items to come in to play though, a character would either have to make a successful requesition draw or spend the right number of DP.
And the biggest issue is Stakes. I've been playing in a whole lot of Shadow of Yesterday lately. It's a fun game, well written, with great rules. It also has very explicit stake-setting. Is this something that I should use in CE? My gut reaction is to say "no". Let me clarify by saying that I want explicit, I want the palyers to say exactly what they want, but I just don't tihnk the game lends itself well to narrative control. It just doesn't work right, as the mechanics aren't meant to give a player narrative control, but to give a character in-game power, if that makes any sense.
Using an example from the gameplay above, the player tried to have his character go unrecognized by an NPC. I think what went off the rails here was the use of explicit stakes. If there was something more along the lines of stakes negotiation maybe it would have worked better. I wonder if it would have ran smoother if I had done the following:
Me: "Alright, so picking up with the end of last session... The Greek is staring down at you with a puzzled expression on her face. She mutters your real name under her breath."
Player: "I want to use my False Identity trait. I want to tell her that she's mistaken, that I'm not who she thinks I am, and for her to move on."
Me: "Well, sorry man, but she does recognize you and there's no undoing that. Maybe on a successful draw you can use False Identity to not draw attention to yourself while you talk to the Greek."
Well, that's all I have for now. I'm exhausted after a six day work week and I think I'm going to take a nap.