So, Adam ran two games of Lacuna at WarpCon. The first was with a bunch of folk waiting for a LARP I think, but I don't know anything about that session. I do know about the session that he ran after that one.
We had Adam Kelly running the game, and Matt Machell, Gregor Hutton and a local gamer Richard (who looked freakily like Malcolm in his bleached blond phase) playing.
The thing that strikes me about the very best Indie games is how in some ways they are completely revolutionary, clever and enjoyable, yet in other ways they do things that Indie games "aren't supposed to do". Lacuna has a heart rate monitor as a mechanic for your character and that is based on the player's sex and age. the heart rate goes up when you do stuff in game (you add whatever you rolled on your d6s to the current total) and there is a mechanism called "static" which the GM uses to gauge the weirdness and introduce stuff to the game. All great and innovative. But it also has a GM and rolling up characters on character creation tables, all of which it seems fashionable to not have, but which work superbly in Lacuna.
Anyway, we played the game and it turned out we all worked for the same controller: Agent Snyder. The names rolled up worked great too and Adam presented the game as if addressing our characters, rather than as a GM to players.
So we dropped into Blue City and set about finding some troublemaker, and fighting his insectoid guards. Adam was subtly changing the value on a die as static went up (something that Graham Walmsley does very theatrically when running the game) and while Richard's character bumbled around both Matt and I were tracking down the suspect. I got some very lucky rolls, and a host of 6s to give me commendations, and our heart rates were nicely racing up as we did stuff. We soon passed out of our target heart rate and I enjoyed the tension of that measure changing during play.
The interplay between our characters was enjoyable and things like when we lost Parker ("Control, he was JUST behind us. No we don't know where he's gone.") were good mysterious fun.
In the end we managed to find the suspect and put the Lacuna device on him just as the Arachnid Police turned up. Matt and I then managed to eject out, and Richard did too after some running away and failed ejections first.
I would play it again in a heartbeat.
"Adam presented the game as
Submitted by Joe Murphy on Thu, 31/01/2008 - 13:10.
"Adam presented the game as if addressing our characters, rather than as a GM to players."
That's a good one. Noted.
Was there anything you didn't like about the system or setup, Gregor? Its an altogether too-positive AP.
Um
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Thu, 31/01/2008 - 16:31.
Well, I really would liked to have played for longer and been sent back into Blue City for a follow-up mission, but we didn't have time for that.
As far as the set-up, and all that, I was perfectly happy. I don't know if Matt or Adam have anything to add?
I felt the group was really comfortable with each other and the system is very elegant. The game is only half-there from the book but you start to make it whole during play.
A slight aside
Submitted by Destriarch on Thu, 31/01/2008 - 16:37.
I've always thought 'Lacuna' was a beautiful name. It means large empty space. Gets used in fractal theory a lot.
Ash
Static
Submitted by cthulahoops on Thu, 31/01/2008 - 21:51.
I'm glad you enjoyed it Gregor, and thanks for starting this thread. I'm not sure I was as positive, but that's natural when running a game.
As regards to character creation in character, I'm interested that that is considered novel. That's exactly the process described in the book! At least in my copy, I gather that everyone's copy of the book is slightly different. I also use it in Inspectres, and it's a very nice technique.
I'm also amused by the extent to which elements took on a life I didn't intend for them. My lizard/snake guards became insectoid because my description obviously sounded more insectoid! (I've learnt to hold ideas lightly enough not to argue!) And now, you've turned perfectly ordinary human policemen into spidermen!
The static mechanic is the part of this game that just doesn't seem to work. (At least as written in my copy.) Every time one of a number of triggers occurs static increases. Every time static increases a complicating event occurs. The first 10 events are minor, the next 10 are more interesting, and after that things get nasty. We ended the game on static 10, which meant we had 10 minor events. At this level rate none of the interesting stuff really comes into the game.
I gather from talking to Gregor and Matt after the game, that other people tend to throw in nasties (in particular Rogue Agents, contradictory supervisor orders, restricted clearance areas, etc) at much lower levels. I can only presume that static becomes less of the driving force behind the scenario and more a complicating annoyance.
Next time, I run this I'm going to have some more nasty stuff in place at the beginning regardless of static, and bring down the thresholds to only have 5 events in each static band. As it is, I feel like there's a danger of slipping back into old of habits of having a book load of cool stuff that doesn't actually get used in play.
Hopefully, this will give a more fun game.
I am convinced that I want to see how someone else runs this game. Graham? Someone? Anyone?
Otherwise, as Gregor says, the game was good fun. Once again the heart rate mechanic rocks!
The Other Table
Submitted by cthulahoops on Thu, 31/01/2008 - 21:42.
I thought I'd split a quick note on the other table into a separate comment.
I grabbed three players, two of whom were due to play a LARP in an hour's time and said I'd run quickly. The players were Tom (also appearing in the Need to Kill game), Kevin (who's played in quite a few indie things at cons) and John (who I've not played with before and I was curious how he'd get on with the game). By the time we sat down, we only had about 45 minutes so we only really did character creation and about two scenes of play. The reaction was really positive, to character creation, heart rate, setting and the ability to call up Control for the key to someone's house. They took the game off in a strange direction by looking up the HP in the Blue City phone book!
Theatrics
Submitted by Malcolm Craig on Fri, 01/02/2008 - 02:23.
Adam was subtly changing the value on a die as static went up (something that Graham Walmsley does very theatrically when running the game)
This sounds interesting and I'd like to hear more about this. For those with only a passing familiarity with the game, how do the dice changes impact play? And (which is the main focus of my question), what are the subtle or theatrical methods used (particulalry keen to hear from Graham on this)?
Cheers
Malcolm
Contested Ground Studios
Dice
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Fri, 01/02/2008 - 13:23.
OK, you have three broad areas of skill, and they can be rated 3, 3, 3 or 2, 3, 4 to start the game. You need to roll 11 or over on a dice roll to succeed. And whatever you roll is added to your heart rate irrespective of whether you succeeded or failed.
Now, when you roll dice outside your target heart range you follow those limits. Poor old Parker had only 2 in Access, so he was looking for 11 on 2 dice when he was below 95 and over 137 (or something) to do anything involving Access. That certainly makes you wary of rolling to do things since you have a high chance of failure and will put up your heart rate to boot.
Inside your target heart range you can roll as many dice as you like for anything. So Parker suddenly was able to pick up 3 or more dice for an Access roll when in his target heart range. You can do things easily. But, again, you have to watch when you shoot out the top of your target heart range because then you're back to your limited ratings.
You also get commendations for rolling 6s when in your target heart range. These can be used to do fancy stuff -- Snyder had taught us all Meditation which meant we could use a commendation to lower our heart rate by d6 (handily I had 6 commendations by the time I came out of my target heart range for instance).
It drives play by getting us doing stuff to get our heart rate up (a warm up by an athlete, really) and then you're in the zone. When you go out the top of your zone, you are mindful that you have a maximum heart rate to watch for. Going beyond this degrades your ratings and could make Ejecting difficult (especially if you have a poor Access rating I think).
All the while failures and disobeying orders ratchets up the static. I think it would take a few missions for you really to be wandering off and by then you'd have personal static too, I think.
We never got that far in Adam's game. It was just starting to get weird when we ejected which I'm fine with for a first session.