Aha the wonders of playtesting! Ran Monkey for a group of five at GoPlayManchester which was an absolute tonic for all the writing and introspection that I've been doing about SQ/Monkey recently. In short it was good to take it out for a spin.
We played 'The Ministry of Thunder', an idea ruthlessly nicked from the lovely Tim Gray whose original idea was much more eloquent than the action packed comedy that ensued at the gaming table using Monkey. Here's the quick pitch I used;
Your errant immortals finds themselves in trouble with the Heavenly Authorities. Fully expecting to be cast out of Heaven for your crimes, instead you find yourselves drafted into the celestial Ministry of Thunder. Run by the God of Thunder, Lei Gong, it takes on the role of punishing those crimes that mortal law can't or won't reach
The game went swimmingly once we started playing, but there were some areas where the rules didn't work as well;
The Good
The Bickering rules worked a treat, two of my players from my first successful play test (the lovely Rob and Mr C) who inspired me writing them gave me a text book example of good implementation, which will make it in the rewrite.
Having a 'Three strikes and your out' rule for major character, two strikes for supporting characters and one strike for mooks worked much better for tracking combat and drawn out conflicts and will replace the existing Dramatic Action rules.
The Bad
Character gen dragged again like it did at Furnace. Need more examples for magic powers, cheat sheets, visual aids (?) to make the experience easier and less brain melting.
The Ugly
Grafted in some 'attacking multiple opponents' & 'assisting other character' rules in game, which worked overall but need some polishing out of game. Still a win though since the current rules didn't have these areas and the players at the table really wanted them.
Overall it went very well. Even though it was tarnished for me by the fact the rules aren't as smooth as I hoped, self criticing often brings me down, the game was greatly enjoyable with some fantastic Roleplaying from the players. The Ministry of Thunder is now going to become my stock demo game and I'm keen to play it with other players ;)
I'd certainly like to play
Submitted by David Donachie on Mon, 10/03/2008 - 10:17.
I'd certainly like to play it! If you are ever running anywhere I am, please tell me
http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/
CharGen
Submitted by Destriarch on Mon, 10/03/2008 - 10:40.
I find that Character Generation almost always drags, regardless of how free and simple the system is. If it's structured, people have difficulty deciding between options. If it's freeform and open, people have difficulty coming up with ideas. So long as people weren't getting confused about how the rules themselves functioned, I wouldn't worry about that problem too much.
(In the worlds before Monkey, primal chaos reigned. Heavens sought order. But the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown. The four worlds formed again and yet again, as endless aeons wheeled and passed. Time and the pure essences of Heaven, the moisture of the Earth, the powers of the Sun and the Moon all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation. And it became magically fertile. That first egg was named 'Thought'. Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said, 'With our thoughts, we make the World'. Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it came a stone monkey. The nature of Monkey was irrepressible!)
Monkeeeeeeeeey!
Furnace
Submitted by Neil Gow on Mon, 10/03/2008 - 11:04.
I played Monkey at Furnace and I had an excellent time. Its a great concept for a game, totally underused imo and it greatly benefitted from Newt's exhuberant GMing style.
Can I suggest that the chargen at Furnace may have dragged a little (and I say only a little because it wasn't THAT bad!) because:
1. There were quite a few people around that table, six or seven iirc, which is a lot for a no-pre-gen convention game.
2. It was pretty obvious that there were a lot of different play styles - from wily veterans to that lass for whom it was her first proper rpg session. That takes some time to gel.
3. It was the first session of the con, on a Saturday morning. Not a natural time for gaming brains to be fully functional.
4. No beer had been consumed.
Put the system in the hands of a familiar group of four people with a familiar play style in a grooved gaming mindset and it would have flowed perfectly. In a 'proper' extended game, taking a little while to luxuriate over chargen choices and potential story hooks is one of the fun bits of games, again imo, so I don't have a problem with it.
Neil
Who called the Earth to silence in his administrative rage...
Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/
I seldom do actual character
Submitted by David Donachie on Mon, 10/03/2008 - 11:54.
I seldom do actual character gen at cons, or at most do most of the gen and leave a few things over for the day.
Not sure what to do for Solipsist, maybe I should totally pregen the characters but leave one Obsession and Limitation open? Help!
http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/
Pregens
Submitted by Destriarch on Mon, 10/03/2008 - 13:20.
I seldom do actual character gen at cons, or at most do most of the gen and leave a few things over for the day.
Not sure what to do for Solipsist, maybe I should totally pregen the characters but leave one Obsession and Limitation open? Help!
There are some cases in which I think you have to do character generation at the time because it is so much a part of the game (Best Friends springs to mind) but in general I strongly agree that pre-gens are the way to go for conventions. If there's nothing seriously bizarre about character creation, then I'd say pregen Solipsist too.
Ash
Pre-gens
Submitted by Newt on Mon, 10/03/2008 - 14:08.
Just to clarify, I normally never do character generation for convention games.
I did in the case for Monkey, because
1. I wanted to test the char gen system.
2. Thought it was a good way to explain the background and setting.
3. The scenarios I've run aren't that long
In hindsight I'll probably be going back to doing pre-gens, but it has been useful as part of the play testing process.
Saying that a mate of mine did suggest a more Spirit of the Century : Generate your character as you play approach, which I've done successfully in HeroQuest, so I'll be looking at this as an optional way of doing Character Gen.
Regards
;O)Newt
D101games -An Imaginary Company
Dragging Chargen
Submitted by Matt on Mon, 10/03/2008 - 14:23.
Prep certainly shouldn't be a drag. It might take a while, but it should be engaging. It's too long since I've looked at Monkey, but here's some more general thoughts on what impacts drag, aside from unfamiliarity and larger groups:
1 - Failure to communicate what play will involve
2 - It's unclear what impact choices at this stage will have
3 - Too many choices
4 - Unclear what is cosmetic and what is procedural
5 - Lack of shortcuts to understanding
6 - Time to task
1 and 2 are linked. If you don't communicate what the game will be like to engage with, people get hesitant on what to take. They have no idea what the consequences of this prep will be. The more clearly you can flag that up, the better.
3 is about a concept called the paradox of choice. The more options you give someone, the less confident they are their choice is the correct one. The more you can narrow down choices in prep to the ones that are meaningful for this game, the better.
4 if i'm picking traits, do I know if they're purely cosmetic description or if they have a systematic/situational impact? If you don't signpost this then again indecision is more common.
5 is about methods to speed-up "getting" the game, and getting the groups take on it. People often don't want to tread on other player's toes, and the quicker everybody understands the groups needs, the easier that process is.
6 is about how easy it is to affect my choices, once I make them. How much rule-checking and activity is needed to commit my choice to my character sheet once it's made? Small amounts here can have big impact when spread across multiple choices and multiple people.
-Matt
Realms Publishing
Even when you break things
Submitted by David Donachie on Tue, 11/03/2008 - 08:29.
Even when you break things down into little steps you get the paralysis of choice problem. I found doing Solipsist with Gregor and John Wilson that just asking them for a 2-sententce vision was really hard, because it could be anything.
It's so much easier when you have classes, or races, or something from a fixed list to pick, even if there is still a lot of choice. My last but one GURPS campaign I started it off with a 3-session mini-game (to try out the setting and the characters) and for that one I generated 12 or so characters first and then just had people pick. Once the campaign started properly I then let them tinker with them, but it was so much easier for them to choose than design from scratch.
Maybe archetypes are the way to go? I remember Talislanta has something crazy like 200 character archetypes to make your character from, but all themed and zoned by region and nation.
http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/