Everyone is perfect.... except for you
While I am thinking about gaming (and avoiding prepping for running Psi*Run), I thought I should probably write up some notes about our recently concluded game of Perfect.
Perfect is a game set in a dystopian, Victorian-inspired, society. You are criminals who are acting against the Man (who know that it will cost them) and it's about exploring the motivations and thoughts of those criminals through a very structured system-knowing that the law will catch you at some point and that it is unlikely to end happily.
There is no GM. It is a very rigidly structured game and each player character acts in isolation from all other player characters. This felt very alien to me and the other players and we instinctively created links between our characters even if there was no actual interaction. As a player, you have three different roles: criminal character, law player, and audience.
As the criminal character, you commit a crime against society, as the audience (and as the law player) you ask questions about the crime and criminal aiming to understand the criminals motivations and reasons. Then the law player asks the criminal player how important the crime is to the criminal, and asks the audience how important the crime is to society. Then there's some mechanical stuff that I can't be bothered going into right now, but the law player will probably end up with something that they can use now or later, and ends with a reflection scene for the criminal player. How much you got out of the character and the game did depend on how much you were willing to emotionally invest in it, and you had to be quite analytical about your character.
We had some wildly differing crimes, and often as an audience player the question of how important the crime was to society was answered by how public the crime was. We all approached the criminals differently and it was quite interesting to see our different approaches. I enjoyed exploring the different roles, but as someone who has usually played an ad hoc version of FATE, the structure was quite challenging and we kept referring to back to the book a lot.
That being said, the book was quite helpful. There was a decent amount of explanatory text at the beginning that laid out the aims of the game and what sort of society Cadence had. I was able to add bits to my character by using this text for ideas. Some of the mechanics later on could be laid out more clearly, and there didn't seem to be enough difference/uses for minor and major holds (something the law player could obtain), but it was generally clear and easy to understand.
In the end, although we all found exploring this quite interesting, we found the characters being in isolation from other player characters quite hard to deal with and wrapped up the game a couple of weeks ago. I'm glad I've played it. I think it's generally a good game and well-worth playing. However, I'm also in no hurry to play it again.
Perfect is a game set in a dystopian, Victorian-inspired, society. You are criminals who are acting against the Man (who know that it will cost them) and it's about exploring the motivations and thoughts of those criminals through a very structured system-knowing that the law will catch you at some point and that it is unlikely to end happily.
There is no GM. It is a very rigidly structured game and each player character acts in isolation from all other player characters. This felt very alien to me and the other players and we instinctively created links between our characters even if there was no actual interaction. As a player, you have three different roles: criminal character, law player, and audience.
As the criminal character, you commit a crime against society, as the audience (and as the law player) you ask questions about the crime and criminal aiming to understand the criminals motivations and reasons. Then the law player asks the criminal player how important the crime is to the criminal, and asks the audience how important the crime is to society. Then there's some mechanical stuff that I can't be bothered going into right now, but the law player will probably end up with something that they can use now or later, and ends with a reflection scene for the criminal player. How much you got out of the character and the game did depend on how much you were willing to emotionally invest in it, and you had to be quite analytical about your character.
We had some wildly differing crimes, and often as an audience player the question of how important the crime was to society was answered by how public the crime was. We all approached the criminals differently and it was quite interesting to see our different approaches. I enjoyed exploring the different roles, but as someone who has usually played an ad hoc version of FATE, the structure was quite challenging and we kept referring to back to the book a lot.
That being said, the book was quite helpful. There was a decent amount of explanatory text at the beginning that laid out the aims of the game and what sort of society Cadence had. I was able to add bits to my character by using this text for ideas. Some of the mechanics later on could be laid out more clearly, and there didn't seem to be enough difference/uses for minor and major holds (something the law player could obtain), but it was generally clear and easy to understand.
In the end, although we all found exploring this quite interesting, we found the characters being in isolation from other player characters quite hard to deal with and wrapped up the game a couple of weeks ago. I'm glad I've played it. I think it's generally a good game and well-worth playing. However, I'm also in no hurry to play it again.