I'm currently playtesting Umlaut and thought I'd better post the other rules changes I've included.

1) All performance traits gained in Rehearsal Scenes now have to be assigned to a band member. I'm testing this to see if it makes the Split/Threat scenes more tense. So far it seems that people just spread these points out over the whole band one at a time. This has the advantage that it makes the players flesh out the entire band if they want to play for optimal strategic advantage. Players just playing for narrative awesomeness will flesh out whoever they damn well please anyway, so I like this.

2) Gaining Ego during a Work/Member/Publicity Stunt scene only happens if you lose, and you don't get narration of the outcome. More on that later, currently I'm unsure about this, hasn't really been tested much because the current playtest has concentrated on Gigs so much.

3) During Gig Scenes, the "audience" players pick styles which the audience want to hear for each song. Bands which match this style for this song get a bonus Glory.

As an extra incentive for picking Styles other bands won't want to play, the Audience players get a bonus point if they manage to get through an entire gig without giving away any bonus Glory. These Bonus points don't have a name yet*, the playtest group is calling them Bennies because we play Savage Worlds.

These Bennies can be spent on a couple of things right now:

1) They can be used to initiate a Split Scene for another Band. They are the only way to do this.

2) They can be used to perform an Egotism. There is no longer any gain in Ego for performing an Egotism, the only way to pull one off is to spend a Bennie.

3) You can spend them to automatically gain narration over a conflict. That means you can spend them to prevent your Showboating from going bad or to prevent yourself from gaining Ego in a Work/Member scene.

These are the current changes. I'm happy enough with them now that I'll try to get them typed into a workable playtest document for other people to look over.

* We thought of Gold Disks, but this might be confused with the band actually getting a gold disk. Flaming Skull Points are the current top name, but I think there's a better name out there. If anyone has any ideas, please fire away!