Thanks Gregor, that was quick! :) And no, I doubt John will post here.

It all went pretty well from my point of view as well. I was trying very hard to follow the GM guidelines as set down in the book, rather than fudging anything with my own understanding of how it should go, and it seemed to work just fine.

There were a few points of advice that I could see would be useful to add, but most of the time you suggested that something should be in the book I was glad to find that it was already there :)

What was best for me was how easily the story flowed just by looking at your obsessions and limitations. In the time it took you two to choose names (which was, admittedly, quite a while :) I easily sketched out a setting, and a few potential scenes, all of which we actually used in play. It was also nice to see how much agreement we all had about when a Change of Reality was needed and when it wasn't. I think we had 6 or 7 changes in total and I only had to argue for one, the rest you naturally suggested yourselves, in other words you set your own dial about what was plausible without a change and what wasn't. I'm sure another group would have it at a different point, but that's all good :)

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Working together and both chipping in Infestation allowed us to hit perfect changes most of the time (but at the cost of our precious Infestation). That was a good thing for me and John, so we ended up with how we wanted it to be. There were times when I considered failing to get a boost to my limitations, or overshooting to get Infestation (but at the cost of a Tear).

If we had been short at the end of Infestation I think John and I would have pushed through to get the Shadow out of there, and damn the consequences! :)

I'd like to have tried an Obsession scene but I dug the Limitation scene I did do, actually.

Yes, there just didn't seem to be a time to tempt anyone with an Obsession scene, which was fine. The Play by Email game I'm doing with Victoria has had one though, and it worked well, since it offered her the chance to have just what she wanted (a House by the Sea as it happens) at the cost of a Tear, or make the choice to deliberately fail and tick her own Limitations to avoid it. She took the Tear :)

I think the only thing I did wrong there was forget to tell you that you could introduce your own Obssession scene if you wanted to, sorry about that.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Sounds like you had an interesting game guys.

David, or Gregor, can you tell me how the information on the character sheets is used to inform the setting creation that you mention? Does the GM frame things aggresively, or is it a more collaborative method? David mentions making up scenes before the game began, how does this work and does it feel railroady from the point of view of the players?

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Hi Ian

The scenes I made up were much more notes to myself on possible bang-like events than full scenes. If I remember rightly (the notepad is at home) What I wrote was

• people are in danger from some sort of storm or bad weather
• the storms are in the control of a storm king
• at one point they will meet fleeing people going the other way from them and needing protection

All those three came from the character's traits. Gregor had both an obsession and a limitation to do with weather, hence the first idea. John had a limitation about being defeated by a nemesis (or dogged by a nemesis), which gave me the second, and both of them had obsessions about protecting people, making friends, making people feel safe and the like, which is why I felt the third should happen.

The first scene was pretty much framed by all of us. I asked John and Gregor if they wanted to start in Edinburgh or not, and since they were not bothered I stated that we started in the mid-west, because of the storms that had been on the news recently. I also saw that John's character was homesick for the country and had been raised in the plains, which reinforced the choice. Gregor then mentioned an incident where him and John had (in real life) been on a plane in the midwest that had been struck by lightning, so we went with that as the opening, with their plane ditching in a cornfield in the middle of a storm, it all went from there.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Basically when you create your character you are throwing up flags for the GM (and the other players) about what is important to your character. Look at my character above. Those are the key things the GM is looking at to make a game interesting for me, because I can only use those things. They are the things I'm going to do, the people I'm going to involve, the ties that are going to give me strength or hold me back. Really, explicitly, the character is informing the GM of how I will see the world and who is in it.

It was nice actually talking about where we wanted to start, and on the table were all the things we could put in the mix. So some things milled about but then we had a GM to say, "OK, got it, you are here" and as he sets the scene we get to kick back and go "OK, lead us in and we'll get rolling when we want to do stuff."

The GM does have to draw lines in the sand, that's expected. As players we were drawing them for ourselves too, for instance we naturally were respecting our own views of "reality" -- it was a group thing, really. But, for us, the game wasn't about the GM being in our face "aggressive", it was about us asking what was there, what could we do, reasoning for things and then, if the GM said "No" we could think around it or try to change it. But it was healthy for him to say No.

I think David was pretty laid back about where the path was leading. OK, it looked like the dude was on the stormy mountain and we were happy with that, but we could have changed that and had him under the airfield if we'd wanted. The opposition was coming from David's Thread tokens and his other Shadow tokens. When he started laying those out, we were looking to see who we could "imagine in" to help us (like my friends decided to come back after saying they wouldn't, funny how that happens...).

Yes, I put him on the mountain, but as we said on the night it was a 'conceptual mountain' :) There was a place where there was a Shadow, threatening the people (with weather). It could have been anywhere that seemed good for the story.

It did give me a few last things to put in, but as you suggested Gregor, I think it would be in the form of quotes, or little notes in the margin.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

But they're _not_ flags. They tell me what a character wants, not what a _player_ wants. They're no different to writing down 'Firearms 5' in VtM - do I want a lot of shoot-outs or do I have a high skill because I want to bypass combat entirely? In Solipsist, an obsession of 'I want to make friends' doesn't tell me much about the player's desires. Compare with TSOY's Keys, or DRYH's character sheet as GMing tools.

That's one of the big problems I have with Solpsist as it stands. There's nothing in the text that makes my gaming easier. David's bangs examples are good, but that's _not in the text_.

...I'm sure you're clear you won't enjoy the game or the book, Joe, and that's fine. I'm also sure we can't change it sufficiently for you to be fully satisfied with it either. And that's fine too. No book is good for everyone, but I do strongly think the book will be good for someone.

Mechanically you can only use Obsessions, Limitations or Infestation to alter reality. So... anything a player puts as an Obsession or Limitation is what they are going to be bringing in to the fiction (that might be people, situations, emotions or whatever). To me, it isn't the same as Vampire and the player loading Dex+Firearms as a reaction to some GM plot coming down the pipe.

In TSOY you do things associated with your Keys and you get XP to improve your character (or you can buyoff a Key in return for XP). So the reason to do them is to advance abilities. Obsessions and Limitations work a bit like that as using them and succeeding/failing alters their value in return.

Oh, and I know that David flippantly said it wasn't a game for him, but I think he's been pleasantly surprised with the PBEM game he's been having with Victoria. Right, David?

They are now :) Seriously thanks to your feedback, the feedback from a US gaming group, the feedback from this playtest, and the feedback from Victoria I've added a fair bit more advice of this sort, and there will probably be more once the editing process is finished. Will it be enough? Only time will tell :)

Yes indeed, I am enjoying it, and I enjoyed the game we had too, enough that I'd quite like to do another in the near future :) The game doesn't push all my gaming buttons (I can't think of a single game that does) but I enjoy it a lot more now than in the first iteration :)

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

I'm not asking anyone to change the book - who the hell am I?

I do feel that the book will not play like some of the AP. And so like Shock 1.0 (or a host of other games, including Sorcerer for that matter), people will have to dig through forums and posts in order to find out what the game should play like. Solpsist is 'half-baked'. The text does not communicate play - it communicates character generation, and the nature of in-game reality, but not play.

Communicating how to play a game, and how to enjoy playing a game, is a huge challenge for any game text. I'm sure that no book out there does a 100% perfect job. Certainly not Best Friends, nor Cold City, Contenders, Covenant, Dead of Night, or Mob Justice to varying degrees.

However, I am confident that the book has improved on this aspect over each iteration, and the final one will be as far as David and I could take it.

If it's not far enough for the game buying public then that's their call -- when the final book is out there I'd encourage people to get a hold of it and look through it. If we fall short then we're sorry, but we're OK with that as we tried the best we could.

I am sure that it will be more prescriptive on play, with more examples, than a load of books out there (and selling well). And it wouldn't be there without the feedback we've had from players and the community, for which we're absolutely appreciative.

Other comments aside, Ian, did what I posted answer your questions? If not, please let me know.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

I think I have the answers I was looking for. I haven't read any of the book text so can't comment on the layout or explanation of the book. I would advice though, as this is something I am encountering with Reel Adventures, that with a game that sounds quite improvisation heavy that you provide plenty of help for both players and GM.

Hope it all goes well.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Thanks Ian, I do know that its a potential problem. One group of playtesters, who came from a very trad background, found the improvisation level fairly intimidating. Then again I think I have a lot more advice in the text now than, say, IAWA, whicch probably requires *more* improv :)

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Now I don't know much about in IAWA but it is a game that will mostly be bought by those already into indie games who have a good sense of how to improvise and are used to that in games. As such it may not need much improv advice.

What is the target audience for solipsist? Is it going only for the indie crowd or are you casting your net wider?

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

I strongly suspect that the audience for Solipsist is that same crazy hippie indie crowd :) Well them plus some other people I know who are not crazy indie hippies but will buy it because I wrote it :)

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/