Fair Play » Playtest

Love in the Time of Seið

Jason — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:34:06 +0000

Me and Matthijs Holter wrote a game! It’s called Love in the Time of Seið and it is pretty neat – sort of a quick-play hack of Matthijs’ game Archipelago II, which I well and truly adore. This is a super-focused version that provides characters, situation, and fun kickers, as well as semi-scripted events. You can play through it in a fun evening of sex, deception, and saga-style tragedy. If you’d like to playtest, drop Matthijs a note at matthijs1000 (at) hotmail (dot) com – we’d like your input.

Also: Seið, in case you aren’t up to speed on Old Norse. My favorite character is the Seiðkona, who has a lot to answer for.

Paging Dr. Playtest

Jason — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:52:44 +0000

Here are two surgical procedures, a pyloric valve enlargement and a selective vagotomy. The instructions are on individual sheets, and both use the same chart sheet (you’ll need two of MH01). I’d love to have some people try them out and tell me how long they took (in seconds from picking up the scissors to putting them down), and if the instructions were clear enough. You need scissors, sticky notes (which stand in for sutures, to close the cuts you make) and a sharp pencil for poking. Dr. Lattimore can explain it better than I can. Thanks! Give it a try!

Dying Cowboy Update

Jason — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:46:04 +0000

I got a chance to playtest Cowboys With Big Hearts again on Saturday at Ice Station Nerdly. It went surprisingly well! Here are the 54 cards:

I printed out the card content onto Avery 5263 labels and stuck them on color-coded index cards. The finished version will be 2.5″ by 3.5″ playing cards. Here’s us playing:

One player had never played a roleplaying game before that day. She was fantastic, as you might expect. The game is a weird mix of extremely heavy, old school GM authority and completely player-driven action. I think it may end up being tricky to get right, but I may be mistaken. The new RPGer said “This is really fun. I want to run this at PAX east next spring” to which I said “OK!”.

Camp Nerdly 3

Jason — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:53:00 +0000

I’m back from the fourth Camp Nerdly, and being back feels good, like a corner has been turned. It was wonderful to reconnect with my scattered friends and feel the Nerdly vibe again. It was especially good to hang out with folks from far afield, like Dave Younce and Ryan Macklin. I’d stepped back from organization this year and it was a pleasure to just do my chore and forget about it, knowing there would be food on the table and a clean bathroom. Thank Clinton and the organizers if you had a trouble-free, fun event! Those guys worked their asses off. The weather was great on Saturday, best ever. The food was good and plentiful and the bacon was a big hit. The games were also good, although I didn’t have any great sessions this year. A Taste For Murder was a fun playtest, but a playtest nonetheless. How We Came To Live Here, which I had been greatly looking forward to, sort of got dominated by one participant and wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped it would be. I think it seriously suffered form the compressed con game format. Fiasco went well, but was very subdued – everybody chose the more mellow options in the suburban playset, so it ended up being a family relationship drama rather than unfettered chaos. Because of this, the aftermath didn’t really click well for me and I need to think about that. Montsegur 1244 was solid, but we started at a leisurely pace and then had to play catch-up, and Emily Boss had to leave early for her chore, which sucked. And the Freeform playtest/sampler event didn’t live up to my very high expectations – the playtest part was good and informative, and the full game just wasn’t that fun for me. I think I am alone in that assessment, though, and people were using the techniques we’d just taught, so that’s a good thing. I had a lot of good conversations, made some new friends, spent really pleasant hours with people I love and respect, and came home fired up to do some new things.

First Playtest of Carolina Death Crawl

Jason — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 23:47:35 +0000

Me, Clinton, Shane, and Remi playtested Carolina Death Crawl today and it went … OK. I learned a lot about how the game works and what it’s weaknesses are currently, which is great. Of course these guys always bring it, so we had a wonderful, picaresque story of four guys struggling to get home – an erratic and cowardly Lieutenant; a Sergeant with a rotting, infected leg; a blowhard Corporal with a quick temper, and an ultra-religious Private whose love for his wife knew no limits. He survived, by betraying the Sergeant and every oath he’d ever taken. Along the way an old lady got hung from a cypress tree, a bunch of contrabands were mercilessly gunned down, a southern belle learned where not to hide valuables on her person, and many things were burned down.

The game needs a more brisk prologue that kick-starts play, many of the character and action elements need to be tightened, and card handling needs to be given some attention. And there needs to be more reference material and a shorter pre-game monologue. It played in an hour and a half and I can see the good in it. Exciting!