The Dragon vs The Gun
Nerdinburgh Playtest

It's been a while (too long!) since I've been able to run a playtest for my upcoming game The Dragon vs The Gun [DvG]. DvG is about a mighty clash between chaos (The Dragon) and reason (The Gun). It's a cross between Polaris and Killer using D12s and a revolutionary system of nudges!

Fortunately I was able to grab one of the slots at the splendid Nerdinburgh ably hosted by Per. Thanks Per. The playtest gave me plenty of food for thought and there will be quite a few changes to the text coming out of it. Overall the game went really well and was a lot of fun for everyone involved.

As DvG is a marvellous GMless game (all the best games are these days) I acted in a facilitator role, explaining the rules and options to people.
Of the four players I only knew Joe M. I've gamed with Joe several times, he is a great roleplayer but crucially honest about things he doesn't like! Calum and Jenny are in a relationship and also in Joe M's regular gaming group. We all met Pooka for the first time!

So as the old codgers went off to play Sorcerer and Sword us young uns and Joe settled down for a game of DvG. Pooka recorded the session, which I suspect will prove invaluable to this games designer. Though this first post is just from memory. I don't want to be biased by what was actually said. Erm anyway...

I kicked things off by reading out the introduction and setting from the game text. This helped get everyone on the same page as to what the game was about. We went with the default setting The Twilight Valleys of Sun and Moon.

Character Creation
DvG has players running multiple PCs (it's so out there). I was conscious of the time limit and had intended for just a couple of players to have two PCs and the others to have a single PC each. However, after some discussion we decided to go for the default option of two PC's each. PC creation was entertaining and quite collaborative as the players shared ideas. I brought up Alignment early on as I was conscious of how faction balance affects the game. As such we ended up with three Dragon-Kin, three pro-Gun Slayers and two neutrals. The PCs were:

Player: PC [Alignment] - Primary Traits

Pooka: Miles [Reconciler] - Satyr. Outcast.
Pooka: Zane Landisman [Slayer] - Human & proud of it! Adroit.

Joe M: Lih [Slayer] - Riflewoman. Peasant.
Joe M: Emaus [Nihilist] - Veteran (Manticore).

Calum: Mikhail Ranaska [Slayer] - Sense of duty.
Calum: Jack 'The Squirrel' [Dragon-Kin] - Trickster. Friendly.

Jenny: Lyra [Dragon-Kin] - Dryad.
Jenny couldn't think of a second character so she opted for a pre-gen - Lady Atemia, ruler of the Moon valley.
Jenny: Lady Atemia [Dragon-Kin] - Mistress of the Wyld Hunt

Overall Character creation took a little longer than I'd hoped (about an hour). There is a significant amount of number crunching in the current version of the rules, no more so than most other RPGs out there but still more than I'd like. So chargen points will be revised, instead of 36 points, each PC will be built from 12 points. Factored into this I'm going to standardise Primary Traits, so that every PC gets two (as it stands now there is no mechanical advantage to having more than one Primary Trait).

We then moved on to deciding upon each PC's Quest goal. Some good story stuff here: Emaus wanted to have a child, Lyra was trying to recover a stolen artifact, Mikhail and Zane both wanted to impose order on the world. An interesting point came up - can quests directly involve other PCs? Embarrassingly I forgot my own rules which clearly state they can't...Ah well. I may modify it to allow goals involving other PCs if their player explicitly agrees.

We briefly touched on Quarries - each PC wants another dead or removed. Quarries are not chosen until after the first round of scenes, but I wanted the players to be aware of them.

Playing The Game - Prologue Scenes
I quickly explained how the scene structure worked. Then Pooka kicked things off with a scene for Miles, framing the satyr lecturing some of his young acolytes. It was established that a skirmish had broken out near the border. Pooka set Miles the scene goal of stopping the fighting. I explained how bidding to introduce a conflict worked and Joe (IIRC) weighed in - the fighting was more severe than originally thought and some of the acolytes were involved! Miles used his Dragon Aspects to raise a force of woodland creatures and sang a beguiling ballad. The song did the trick and the forces disengaged.

Joe took the next scene, the diminutive sniper Lih opportunistically taking out forces from both Valleys, in an attempt to escalate the border conflict. However, the satyr's song still lingered, causing Lih to weep and spoil her aim. Lih failed and was given a new tertiary Trait - tears.

Calum took a scene next for Mikhail, the soldier had been dispatched to help the Sun forces establish a new colony - the problem was the Moon village in the way. Mikhail's goal was to eradicate the village's resistance. Pooka provided the conflict - Mikhail received a dispatch ordering him to return to the Sun valley, a military escort was required for one of the wonder-makers. This was Pooka bringing in Zane indirectly, very nice. Calum lost the conflict, Mikhail's duty compelled him to leave before he could crush the village.

Jen took her turn last. Lyra returned to a sacred grove to find the dryad warders slain and the the life sustaining artifact stolen. Lyra's goal was to reach the Dryad ancients to report the theft. Despite all her woodland trickery, Lyra failed and was alo drawn into the border conflict with the Sun troops.

After the first round of scenes I made sure that quarries were formalised, each PC chose a quarry (in secret). Though Pooka didn't realise it was in secret at first and told everyone he was going after Lady Atemia! He then changed it.

At this point in the game Pooka had the lead in Power Points (PPs), Joe and Calum were about equal and Jenny was lagging behind a little.
We had a four story elements established, but these didn't play as big a part mechanically as I'd intended. Probably because I didn't remind people how they were used. The story elements did inform people on framing scenes and bringing in conflicts though - which is just as important.

The next round of scenes got more interactive, tying the characters together. Mikhail joined up with Zane and the Sun forces who had the dryads artifact the final component for his greatest invention... The Dragon-Kin launched a counter attack spearheaded by centaurs and dryads - they overcame Zane's 'beautiful killing machines' bust lost many kin. Emmaus tried to steal the artifact, an ancient egg. He failed and gained the Flaw 'Works for Zane'. The Moon Valley dispatched Luna's chosen, the werewolf elite to join the assault on the convoy. The second round of scenes built towards a climax as Lady Artemia opted to lead the attack personally. Zane and Mikhail both bought entry into the scene, giving Jen some much needed Power Points. All four players were involved in heavy fighting: Jen had Atemia attack Mikhail, Zane helped Mikhail and Emmaus joined Atemia. The advantage swung one way then another as the wolves overran the camp and the Sun forces hastily built a barricade, allowing them to fend off the wolves with steam-powered lasers! Mikhail came off the worst, taking a nasty shoulder wound from Atemia's arrow. Mikhail and Zane retreated, leaving Jenny with a significant Power Point advantage. Calum was nearly out of PPs, with Joe and Pooka not faring much better.

The final scene we played out was Pooka's. He placed Miles in the Spotlight and had him confront Emmaus. The two characters had a lengthy and intense debate - Miles attack Emmaus to convince him to leave the Valleys behind. Miles succeeded and Joe opted to conserve his remaining PPs for Lih, meaning Emmaus retired from the game. This counted as a 'kill' for Miles and he revealed the manticore was his Quarry - gaining him a PP bounty!

Then we were out of time and Per had some tasty pizzas on the go so we left the game there. Overall I think everyone had a good time. DvG is certainly the most complex of my games to date in terms of mechanics, but even so by the end of the session the players had a lot of the nuances down and were engaging really well with the system. There were some aspects of the system that were underused and some things that I will definitely be changing as a result of the playtest - more on these later!

Cross posted with Story-Games.