We had a usefully bad playtest of Blackguard last night.
So, firstly, Blackguard is a pretty focussed game: it works for thieves burgling buildings, but not much else.
The players, yesterday, started by meeting a maid in a pub and attempting to persuade her into giving a key. Then they did lots of time-shifting narration: "OK, let's say that two days later...".
I gave this a try, but it was fairly clear it didn't work. No problem, lesson learned.
Of course, there was something else going wrong: the players were narrating both the start of the scene and the end: "Let's say we try and persuade the maid..." and then, later, "OK, so she goes off, and two days later."
This was a. exhausting; b. Didn't use the situation-creation mechanic, in which the GM rolls to produce obstacles and c. Goes against the Lesson From Chalk Outlines: it's not fun to provide your own adversity. So, yeah, not surprising it didn't work.
In the way of these things, once one thing went wrong, it all went wrong, and here's the rest.
1. The players complained that the lower skill levels weren't as interesting. They're probably right, in that there's no need, really, to use the lower level skills, and they're much less likely to succeed.
2. That pile of obstacles just didn't seem to go down. They hardly seemed to make progress. Frustrating.
3. There's a narrative problem with Danger. From time to time, Danger just seems to come up again and again and again, and it's just frustrating: "Oh, you've been caught again". There's a few sub-problems going on here, I think, but for a start, I'm taking the exclamation mark off the Style Die.
4. There's a narrative problem with Swag, too. If you're scaling the outside of a building, how do you justify the fact you've just found something to steal? Similarly, if you're being chased?
It was very useful and I'm grateful to the players. (Except that, right at the end, one of the players started suggesting I use cards instead of dice. That was a bit annoying.)
Useful stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'm a bit pissed off, but useful stuff.
Graham
Usefully Bad!
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Sun, 30/09/2007 - 12:01.
I do like playtests that are usefully bad.
Maybe examples of Swag would help? I mean, if I'm scaling a wall and find swag, it's... the Zuruzu diamond placed in the Coat of Arms half-way up the wall. Been safe there for the last 200 years... until I came along.
Swag might also be useful "stuff" and not just "loot". So, something to help you escape is swag?
I think you need to see how up and down the Obstacle points go. Maybe they don't need to start as high as 5? Maybe getting through three obstacle points is good going?
The useless skills are OK for me, you only use them when you are desperate, though that might be a problem in itself (if you failed with the good dice, what use are the crap ones).
Is there a way to "cycle" through the skills? At set points the GM can frame one particular type of scene? But once he's done it then this "force" is burnt? I guess this could be determined by the Blackguard dice the GM uses?
I didn't find any problem
Submitted by David Donachie on Sun, 30/09/2007 - 16:09.
I didn't find any problem with the minor ability, because the dice sometimes demand a certain skill. You said that the thief could try and substitute another skill, but there is no reason for the taskmaster to let them.
I don't think there is an issue with cycling either, although you are less likely to succeed on a 1 dice skill you still do 1/6th of the time, or 7/12th of the time with the style die (and even more if you use a reroll on the style die). You *have* to use the minor skills I found.
We *did* have the same problems with obstacles, mostly because of the extra ones added by danger. Maybe there is no need to add an extra obstacle unless the thief fails the roll to escape?
Graham ... did you have more than one player? I am reading it that you were, I just don't see that working. I think you should celebrate what you have created, a great 2 player game of breaking and entering, which really worked for us.