I played demos of both games (as well as demos of Cold City, Best Friends and Contenders.)

Of all of the demos that I played I found Matt's Covenant demo the most effective. Unlike some of the other demos it didn't feel rushed, although I think that only having 3 players probably helped that (Contenders, by comparison, had 6 players and really suffered for it.) The scene that Matt used was immediate and involving and his explaining the mechanics by showing them in play worked well, again aided by the simplicity of the mechanic. I found it easy to bring in edges and consequences to raise the other player and managed to win both of my conflicts, mostly because I was willing to push that little bit further.

The Esoterrorists demo, OTOH, did feel rushed, despite being twice the length (to be fair so did Malcolm's Cold City demo, Best Friends didn't but then Gregor didn't come close to sticking to 15 minutes and we had such a blast creating characters that I was soild before we'd even started playing.) I'm not sure why, perhaps it was the scenario that you used but I can't say for sure. What I can say is that I don't think that the mechanics came across quite as well as they might have. There seemed to be something of a disconnect between 'investigating' and 'doing other stuff' and it seemed (although feel free to correct me if I got the wrong impression) that 'doing other stuff' would quickly become very difficult as your pools of points go down very quickly. How fast do they refresh (because that will make a big difference to the way that I view the game)?

I think that it may be a simple case of Esoterrorists not being an ideal game for a short, quick demo. It's based primarily around investigation and a good, effective investigation has steps, stages, a build-up. It doesn't have the immediacy of some other genres. Now that isn't a bad thing per se (I love a good mystery) but it doesn't translate that well to a sudden end game scenario being thrown at you. I'm not sure how you'd handle that though. What I will say is that I did see promise in the game and I'm looking forward to seeing a Gumshoe-Cthulhu in the near future.

It's probably worth noting that I felt I dropped the ball a bit with that particular demo... My delivery was a bit flatter than with the others I did that day.

Generally I find that drip-feeding the different mechanics as you go works well, it means you can make sure people have grasped each one as you go. You don't have to go into detail if stuff doesn't click.

With all quick demos it's about showing the key elements of the game. What makes it unique? For Covenant it's conflict and resolving truisms. So you prime the setup to show those. The situation I use in the demo sheet is set up that it's near certain that the conflict will cause a truism to resolve.

You're only going to give a flavour in 15 minutes, so it's got to be the right flavour. It's important not to get bogged down in stuff that's not the core of the game. Longer term play is just not something you'll get across, sadly.

I think going with a typical adventure setup is tricky for a short demo, cos you have to build it up. Much easier to drop folks into the deep end and hit the important stuff. I guess that's an investigation with Esoterrorist? I don't know it well enough to suggest beyond that.

What do you consider its most unique elements?

-Matt

Realms Publishing

As (much to my chagrin) I didn't have time to take part in an Esoterrorists demo, could you let us know in a bit more detail about the important points of the game that you were trying to get across duringt the demo?

I understand that the game has distinct system elements for investigative parts of the game and for general task resolution. Were these the two elements that you were demoing at Dragonmeet or was it a more generalised overview of the game?

From my own personal experince of creating short demos for two quite different games (a|state and Cold City), it can be tricky to actually drill down to what you want to do with the demo and what aspects of the game are the real core elements you want to get across. For a setting-heavy game like a|state, it's actually (I've found) more difficult to demo in a short time frame, because it's the feel of a world you're trying to get across. Cold City is in many ways easier, because the setting can be summed up very quickly, so it's the mechanical elements that are key to the demo.

So, was there a conscious decision on your part to try and put as much as possible into the demo, combining setting and system?

Cheers
Malcolm

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

Esoterrorists are a loose night collective of magicians trying to tear down the walls between reality and the Outer Dark, where the monsters live. PCs are part of a secret but legal US organisation whose job it is to stop the machinations of the Esoterroists and clean up after them. That's the background.

The system is GUMSHOE. PCs have two kinds of skills, investigative for collecting clues and general for dealing with action. The idea is that PCs should always be able to find the minimum information in each scene necessary to proceed with the plot (to counter the "Spot Hidden" problem). As such, the game does require a structured plot. PCs can spend extra investigative points for more, better or other information but they don't need to spend for key clues.

General skills are resolved by point spend plus dice roll (d6) against a difficulty number (4 to 8 usually).

GUMSHOE is a resource management system so a key issue is how quickly to spend points, particularly for general skills.

My demo dealt with the end of a scenario in which PCs investigate a location under threat of being blown up (to encourage urgency). I did make use of investigative skills but perhaps didn't always make it obvious enough to players when they were getting key information.

I think most of us who commented on your blog would have liked to play an investigative scene instead of or as well as the climactic action scene.

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk