Thanks for that Malc, I'm just off to bed and this deserves more thought and input than I have energy to produce right now. I'll post somehing more constructive tomorrow.

But: Hope is supposed to work the way you describe in Split scenes. They're Ego vs (Hope + Cash Spent).

Probably I need to re-write that again, for clarity.

What did most Flaming Skulls get used for? Egotism? That needs consideration. I've seen them used mostly for grabbing narration (especially when Showboating) and starting Split Scenes, but then I've only playtested with the one group.

Overall, how did you feel the game compared to the Spodley game? As in, were the rules better. Did the Audience thing feel more inclusive?

Anyway, more tomorrow.

I think that would be wise, as it was something all four of us failed to pick up on during the game. We had about 4 split scenes and consistently just used Cash, as opposed to Cash + Hope. Looking over the text again, it certainly is there in black and white, but somehow we managed to miss it during the excitement of play. Making the draws for each kind of scene much more prominent in the text would be a real benefit.

The flaming skulls were mainly used for the split scenes and for grabbing narration when showboating was about to go horribly wrong. Otherwise, they didn't really see that much use.

Cheers
Malc

Contested Ground Studios

First up, before I get started on this I want to say a massive thank you to everyone involved in this playtest! You shall all live on in Rock History. Or at least, the credits page.

This is really interesting. I assume that this is just because everyone at the table had a knowledge of metal and the milieu the game's aimed at? I'd be interested to hear how you pitched the game to them and what hooked them in.

How quickly did you get through band creation? Were there any problems with it? Did you use the NPB tables or did you drop NPBs?

First thing is that this highlights the need to re-write the text somewhat. Currently there's an attempt to explain every scene type in isolation. The version I'm working on at the moment defines principles and basic ideas up front, then bangs through the specifics of each scene type quite fast. I think this give a much better sense of context for the rules and aids understanding considerably.

Also: Did you have the Cheat Sheet, or did I forget to send it to you?

I've found the skulls to be relatively rare in the games I've played (with less than one skull going out per gig). Were people really managing to avoid giving out Crowdpleasers that well? I'm starting to think that maybe I didn't explain giving them out right.

Even so, I've thought about other ways to use them.

1) Spend them to gain extra cards into any hand. this could work 1:1 or 1:2 or whatever. It'll need some practice to "tune" it to the right number.

2) Spend them to re-draw a hand. That's mighty powerful though.

3) Spend them in place of Cash. Again, might need to be a 2:1 or 3:1 and will need to be tuned.

I'm sure there's more.

The thinking was that the number of skulls in the game ought to be small enough to prevent too many Egotism moves being used.

A bit of background might help:

To get Flaming Skulls, you have to be in the audience of a gig and make it through the entire gig without ever giving away any Crowdpleaser Glory. Given that you have to choose from 3 cards, and the players giging need to choose from 4 cards, there's a 1 in 4 chance per song that you'll give out Crowdpleaser Glory (and lose your Skull). So at the start of the game, when the gigs are about 2 songs long, you have about a 50/50 chance of getting a Flaming Skull each time you're in the audience of a gig (one-in-four plus one-in-four).

(Actually, that's not quite right, because showboating skews the odds slightly, but it's close enough because the distribution of styles played is not really entirely random)

As the game progresses, you tend to get a Material "arms race" where once one band ups their Material score, the other bands have to as well. In the mid game, Material tends to be around 3 or 4 mark, and you're generally having gigs of 3 or 4 songs. So this makes it much harder to get those flaming skulls: You've got to avoid giving out any Crowdpleaser Glory 4 time instead of twice and the odds drop considerably. So, later in the game Skulls should be much harder to come by.

At least, that's the theory. In the playtest I've run, that actually seems to hold up pretty well. Skull ARE rarer later in the game and people are loath to use them on an Egotism unless things are desperate. Although, actually it makes sense to, because saving it for later to avoid Ego gain by snatching narrative control in a failed work scene work, but that's just avoiding Ego gain rahter than avoiding Ego and gaining a shitload of Cahs too, which is what happens when you win a Gig. So yeah, there needs to be more of a penalty for Egotism.

I'm trying hard to avoid that "problem" which Contenders has where high Pain characters get into that Death Spiral and become unbeatable because they just Bring The Pain ever fight and wipe the floor with their opponents. This isn't really much of a problem in Contenders, given the playstyle and theme, but it sucked bad in early versions of Umläut. Which is why there's no gain in Ego for using Egotism.

But I think that needs to go back in. Because also now Ego makes you more likely to lose members in Split scenes and that'll cripple (or at least hamper) a band who's Ego gets too high.

Yeah, that's just plain wrong. We find that games have been taking 4-6 hours from start to end, including creating bands and epilogues. So "a couple of hours" is blatantly untrue.

My own experiences are that there are three distinct ways of playing the game, and each results in a very different playing time. First up, I've seen the game played almost completely without any type of narrative. that is, people pretty much treating it like a board game. That seems to last about 2 hours, because there's little if any narration, character play, explanation of stuff etc. I've only seen the game played like this once, and that was deliberate to shake down some mechanics in a hurry. Although I can see some people might like the game like that. That seems to take 2-3 hours.

Most games fall into the second category, which is like the game at Spodley. People describe scenes and explain the outcome of conflicts. It's played mostly in the third person. The story is created and told, but mostly it's like reading like about it in a magazine rather than a highly detailed script. That seems to take 3½-4½ hours.

Lastly, we've tried it in an immersive style with people roleplaying through all the scenes in a classic RPG style. That is, being in character, acting out dialogue for every scene etc etc. I can see a game like that taking 6-8 hours, although I've never done it like that all the way through.

Some other stuff:

Were the guys used to the whole abstract resolution thing like a lot of indie games have, or were they expecting something along the lines of D&D but with guitars?

How easily did people sort out the band members list and come up with names?

Were the Split scenes used to target the members with the most traits? Or was it a bit more like just targeting the guy who was seen to be "in the lead"? How often were they successful?

Can you think of any times the Crowdpleaser Glory made the difference to the winner of a gig?

Most importantly: If you'd paid £6 for the booklet and cards version of the game (on the understanding that you were getting something cool, but imperfect) would you have felt ripped off?

Band creation was pretty quick. I'd be hard pressed to say exactly how long, but probably no more than 10 - 15 minutes to explain stuff, assign traits, etc. We did use the NPB creation tables to come up with four additional bands but, to be honest, nobody used them at all. It was fun to come up with them, but they played no part in the game at all.

I think you're correct here. There are several areas of the text that probably need a substantial re-write for clarity. All four of us were looking at the text during various points in the game (we had 2 copies printed out) and everyone had been sent the PDFs you provided prior to the game.

Nope, no cheat sheet.

OK, I think this another area that needs a re-write. What we took the text to mean was that if you fail to assign a crowd pleaser, you get a FS straight away. And, if you didn't asign one during the entire gig, you got an additional FS. From your comments below, this is totally wrong.

Going at these questions in order:

Yes, all of us were used to the abstract systems used in a wide variety of similar games. Steve and I had played in Shock: a couple of weeks previously, Steve and Morgue are very familiar with all sorts of games, Pearce is the only one who's gaming experience I am not too sure of.

The bandmember list was used pretty easily and effectively, it didn't become a chore at all. In the main, though, I think people named 3 or 4 members of their band and left it at that.

I think we had 4 split scenes and two of them were successful. As I remember, it wasn't so much attacking members with significant performance traits, but mainly attacking named members we thought it would be fun to have leave the band.

There were a couple of gigs where the crowdpleaser glory provided the margin of victory. Oh, and Ballads (or Ballards, if you prefer) are still a very powerful choice. If you have high technique, then they give you a good chance of winning against a band with much lower technique. OK, so your power is probably lower, but you have the chance of getting a couple of glory points. In these cases, crowdpleasing glory became the tipping point. I think something needs to be done about Ballads, They are a pretty powerful choice. Maybe there is some kind of 'lameness' thing, where if you do too many ballads, you start losing metal respect.

If I had paid £6 for this and new I had the chance to contribute to development and would getting £6 off the finished product, then I'd be very happy with my purchase. Despite some clarity issues and a few things needing worked on, the game provided us with a night of immense fun from start to finish. Very easily worth a measly £6.

Cheers
Malc

Contested Ground Studios

Ballads seemed a killer choice to me, as a player, when we played in Dublin. I tried to tell myself that our thrash band was just playing Fade To Black, One or Unforgiven. But I thought it was hands down our best tactic, even over Showboating. My fear in picking it was that the crowd pleaser Glory (2) would go to the other band playing a Face Melter -- even with a win on the Technique we might not do enough "damage" with our Ballad to claw those 2 Glory back.

Puncher's Choice in Contenders allows you, if you hit, to just plain blow your opponent out with a KO. That option isn't in Umlaut, if it were it would allow you to play one song so good that the rest of the gig is immaterial. Without it there may be limited ways of clawing back a deficit in a long gig. Can one band just go Ballad, Ballad, Ballad to kill you off? No KO weakens a Face Melter a bit I think, but I could be wrong.

Oh, the Flaming Skulls are supposed to be crowd pleasers, but they are actually a resource that the crowd wants to keep. So rather than picking what you'd like to see, you will pick what you think the bands won't play (to keep your resource). It's a fun game of cat and mouse until you lose the flaming skull.

Hmm, anyway, just some thoughts.

Gregor:

Any time a band gains 6 glory for any one song, they've impressed the crowd so much that the other band is boo'd off stage (or at least, they've impressed the crowd so much that anything the other band does from now on is moot). That 6 Glory includes Crowdpleasers. Given that Ballad is often an optimal strategy, the chances are that the audience will usually pick either a Face Melter of a Solid Performance. This means that there's a decent chance that a Face Melter will get one or two Glory straight off that bat, and with 5 Shred (plus whatever Power the band has) there's a decent chance you'll get the other 4 glory you need when you pull one off.

Also, your assessment of the cat-and-mouse play with the Crowdpleaser stuff is pretty much spot on. I need to include that explanation in the text, because if I explain why the rules are like they are, then the rules become much easier to understand and remember. Context.

Everyone:

Havng said that: The 5 Poetry for a Ballad is still very high, and usually makes the Shred of a Face Melter pretty moot, because the chances are the Ballad will get the crowds attention rather than the Face Melter.

On the other hand, hows this idea: You can't use the same style twice in a row. When you use a style in the first song, you take that card out of your hand and set it aside. That card is unavailable for the next song. So if your first song ia a Ballad, you only have Face Melter, Showboating and Solid Performance to choose from for song 2. So for song 2 you choose Showboating. That card goes out of your hand and isn't available for the next song. Your Ballad comes back into your hand for song 3, so you have a choice of Ballad, Face Melter and Solid Performance.

This will probably increase the number of Flaming Skulls slightly, but not enough to upset things. And it's simple, it's easier to keep track of than limiting people to something like "you can only play half ballads" or something.

I will try to give this a shakedown later this week.

Malcolm:

I think a lot of the misunderstandings are due to legacy problems with the text. This is an artefact of the fact that I haven't finished the proper re-write. What I gave you was essentially the original Contenders mod, patched to make it a complete game, then patched again to make it a better game, then patched again to add some new mechanics etc etc. I desperately needed to throw that text the fuck away and start again from scratch (pretty much) which I'm now doing.

Thoughts?

I can't emphasise how much of a good idea this is. It'll allow you to tackle the text and the rules freshly, as well as getting rid of any legacies and quirks leftover from an earlier draft. I think I've thrown the text of Six Bullets away two or three times now and started from scratch (with a little bit of cut and pasting), and it makes for a tighter revision each time.

Great! Actually that makes it always interesting for a band that's ahead -- as they might walk into their opponents getting crowd pleasing glory and another 4 glory from a performance to turn them over.

Oh, and the "can't play the same song twice in a row" sounds like it will work well. It's simple and clear procedurally. Playtesting will reveal if it's too limiting or actually keeps everyone second guessing. I hope it's the latter.

:)