Umlaut - Another playtest.
We played Umlaut last night. A very good time was had by all. Some notes follow, unfortunately I don't have the stuff with me or the time for a full-on write up right now.
There were 5 players, Chris, Greg, Dave, Claire and myself. None had ever played Contenders before. Chris and Myself had read the rules over a few times though.
Noatable things:
We started at about 7.30. After explaining the rules and odering pizza, we started playing at about 8 and ended just after 11, so 3 hours of actual play. There was a little slowing down to check rules, but nothing much. At the end of the session people were around 7 Fanbase, so I reckon we managed 2/3rds of a game.
I used the new character sheets. People loved the playlist thing and everyone wrote down a few songs during the game. One thing that I want to add to the sheet is a Tour listing. That is, what venues were played and with which bands. This was more to do with the need to track who was booked to play against who in their next Gig, but it occurred to me that it'd make a really neat record of the game after the fact.
Everyone loved the Random Band Name Generator, so much so that everyone except Chris insisted on using it to create their own band's name.
Nobody "bet" on any Gigs with merchandise. I just think people were getting into the rest of the rules and didn't want to push it.
We started with 5 band members. Only one player had a Member scene during the game. I just don't think people saw much point in them but I got the impression they would probably come up more later in the game as everyone tries to reduce their Ego/Hope deficit.
There were a lot of Brawls, but no Member Threats. I think that since nobody wanted to build up a Member, nobody saw any point in spending Hope, Cash and Ego on threatening one. Perhaps if Threats were cheaper they might be more appealing?
(The most memorable Brawl was when the singer from Dave's band barged into a bar and called out Screaming Gorefest Jim from Greg's Death Metal band. Dave lost the conflict and the narration played out with Gorefest Jim turning out to be a midget, and Dave's singer being effectively obliged to beat him up after making such a scene ended up looking like a right tool. On the other hand it did inspire the track "333: the midget of the beast")
An interesting misread of the rules led to a simplified scoring system. Since Victory points are just an abstract doohickey whatyamacallit to show who's impressing the audience more, why not just say:
Successes on Shred + Power - Sucesses on Stagecraft = VPs earned.
Speaking of VPs, we all agreed that they needed a different name. Calling them simply "Glory" seemed to work pretty well.
I think Chris summed up Ego the best by describing it as how sulky a Band was.
Overall, it was a great game. I think the basic framework is pretty sound, but that there needs to be a few play throughs and more polish before it's ready for the bigtime.
Sounds like it was
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Mon, 22/01/2007 - 11:30.
Sounds like it was Contenders-a-go-go last night!
What crazy band names did you end up with?
Poop.
Submitted by Rich Stokes on Mon, 22/01/2007 - 11:54.
Dang, I buggered that up. I wrote that on Friday and didn't check before posting it. I was hoping to be able to post it on Friday evening, but my personal life (and family health issues) conspired against me this weekend.
I can't remember many of the names. I ended up with Fatal Rocket as a Glam band though. I'll have to check when I get home.
The bits that didn't come up
Submitted by Malcolm Craig on Mon, 22/01/2007 - 12:26.
The bits that didn't come up in play actually make the AP report quite interesting. From an outside perspective, the 'betting'/merch side of a gig would be quite important: that's how the band really makes its money. Do you think it was just a desire on the part of the group tp avoid complicating things on the first night out?
The same really goes for members. I'd be super keen to detail the various members of my band. Again, do you think the reticence to bring this into play was simply because it was the first session?
Sounds great though. Umlaut for the win!
Cheers
Malc
Contested Ground Studios
Player types
Submitted by Rich Stokes on Mon, 22/01/2007 - 14:52.
I think a lot of it comes down to player types and rules summaries.
Regarding betting/merch, I think that comes down to the players mostly being storytelling types and not really all that into the rules. That is, apart from Chris (who helped with the proofreading on the contest version of Umläut) I'm the only one who's read either Contenders or Umlaut, and the only one who's really spent a lot of time thinking about the game before we started. Dave would probably read it if I'd had a spare copy. Claire doesn't really spend much time on the rules of games, she tends to learn as she plays. Greg's not really a gamer, but took to narrative really well. So they're (mostly) not the kind who'll read a set of rules and figure out the best way to "win".
Despite the fact that I explained exactly how the betting/merch rules worked (and I'd discussed them at some length with Chris beforehand), nobody really seemed to be all that interested in it. I think people got more hung up on the ins and outs of the Bands' stories than they did on the rules, which I guess shows how nifty the rest of the Contenders system is.
After a few more rounds, I think people would have started to explore the rules a bit more.
Regarding Band members. We started with 5 band members available. Essentially, we started with 5 connections each and the proviso that you didn't have to name them all straight away if you didn't want to. I didn't want to force people to name every band member and every song, because being put on the spot like that and being expected to be creative on a really tight schedule can really put a dampener on people's enthusiasm if they're not in just the right mood. But to be honest, most of the players had named 3 or more members by the time we hit the second scene. It's just that only one person felt like using explicit Member scenes to flesh out their musicians. A lot of character detail and stuff came out during Brawl scenes (The lead singer of one band was a massive nerd and all his brawl scenes involved slagging other bands off on their MySpace pages for example).
I think there would be more Member scenes if people needed extra Hope, but I think most of the players were pretty OK as far as Hope vs Ego went. The one Member scene was done by Chris and he was the one with the most Ego.
I think that a lot of people enjoyed the Gig scenes a lot. Also, the rewards for Gigs are pretty high. You risk no money and get your appearance fee regardless of win or lose. So a band with (say) 4 Fanbase and 3 Material isn't going to be all that keen of gigs which are much longer than 4 songs. That means a Door of 2, and since the majority goes to the winner, you're looking at 2 Cash to the winner. So, these guys get +6 Cash, +2 Fanbase, +1 Hope if they win a Gig, and +4 Cash, +1 Fanbase, +1 Ego if they lose. Sure a Gig takes 2 scenes, but you are guaranteed at least some cash, some fanbase and will get either Ego or Hope. On the other hand, I think using those two scenes for a Member scene (pay some Cash and gain either Hope or Ego) and a Work Scene (Maybe gain some Cash and maybe gain some Ego) is far less rewarding. I think this needs looking at, there ought to be more rules incentive to have Member scenes, at the moment they look like a bad thing compared to juyst playing Gigs and practising.
Cool playtest Rich. Did the
Submitted by JoE PrincE on Wed, 24/01/2007 - 17:23.
Cool playtest Rich.
Did the modified Glory system work ok? I'd just be worried that after two songs one band might be facing a deficit into double figures if the Ego has been brought!
Hmm, Gigs are pretty lucrative, but remember if you Showboat and lose you don't get any Fanbase increase (posers). Perhaps cut the appearance fee to half a bands Fanbase. This might encourage more merchandising too!
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JoE
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