Scott Dorward and I got to play two games at Nerdinburgh II.

The first was with the original playtest doc, with Scott GMing and me playing, I escaped on the 5th GM card. My character Brad was dying by that point and had resorted to playing dead in a stagnant pool of water to get away. The self-slicing cadaverous ghost had left me alone and I was desperate by then. The one extra thing that we noted was that I couldn't help the ghost -- but we then discovered you'd addressed that a bit in the latest draft. (Aside from the usual stuff that's now taken care of in the latest version.)

The second was with me MCing and Scott playing. We liked the odd/even numbering, but maybe it needs a page on explaining what is in the partner book? You could put the Other Draw and other page numbers info on a spread. We don't to know the exact info for the other player but we do need to know they have something different to us and what sort of things they have.

We liked that the loops were called out explicitly.

Scott was trying to escape pretty hard from the concreting ghost (he was going to put Scott's spelunker in a barrel and fill it up with concrete). Scott "saved" another ghost from drowning in a barrel of concrete but wasn't able to run away or really resolve its issues. I liked the "pick one of the following pages -- they're all good" for my ghosts.

So, in the end he was assaulted by the concreting guy again and he died. Shocking but enjoyable end.

I'll point Scott here to see if he has anything to add.

So, I met up with Cat Tobin and Steve Bassett tonight and they tried out Murderous Ghosts. It was fun. I found it creepy too. There were three of us, so Cat was GM, Steve was the Player, and I hoped to get in a second game (and watched the first). It took us about an hour (we took our time!) and so we didn't have a second game. Work night, people loaded with the cold, etc.

Points that came up! Feel free to muse on or ignore any of the following.

* Cat was a little thrown by the "both players should read..." in the GM Intro. She wondered if there was supposed to be a GM and two players (it didn't help I was there making three!). I guess "the player and GM should both read..."
* On Player-5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 you get a Free Draw on Turn 1 (at the start of the game). This just means take a card into your hand, but count it as a High Hand. Steve wasn't sure if he should have a card in his hand at the end of this. But he decided he should have (and I think he's right).
* On GM-15 and GM-16 Cat wondered if the "her" was the ghost or the player. She decided ghost for advantage/disadvantage but it wasn't super-clear.
* On GM-18 there are the options for escape and survive (Cat hadn't realized that Steve could have gotten either outcome on his draw). Maybe something pointing out that the player may survive or escape and will tell you how.
* Steve got excited when he got 21 - Blackjack! Only to realize he was Bust. So, a plea from Steve who hit 21 a couple of times. He'd like it to be a High Hand. (But you're obviously free to ignore him!) He read 21+ as 22, 23..., whereas I read it as 21, 22,... (I think the Blackjack association also fed into that.)

Anyway, in the end Steve's spelunker had escaped a ghost by jumping away off a wooden beam and breaking his legs. He was pitifully lying there, bravely crawling away, when a little boy child in a sailor suit kicked him to death after he didn't play with him. He roused its curiosity, then its pity, but came up short in the end.

I was wigged out, and Cat was a bit too. Steve had fun even though he was murdered.

For me I think of the film Hardware (with Lemmy from Motorhead). (Man, was that really from 1990...!)

Page 6, end of second para: "From this, the world’s psychic maelstrom, we none of us have shelter."

Is that "we know that..." or just "...none of us have shelter."?

Page 7, under Brainer is a word that I don't understand: "accountrement". Is it "accoutrement" (a trapping)?

In longer play do you imagine there are other towers? I guess it strikes me as very much like 28 Days Later.

And I was going to ask a question about the coins but I think I get this now. I get one quad free, the other three quads take one type of coin each, and I can stack up to three of the same type and have "stacks" as a quality.

So, I have to balance how many different types of thing I stick in my bag (and decide what penalty to my mobility that I want to live with), and try and get stackable coins of the same type.

I can see the MC offering me quarters when I want pennies and dimes.