In the game text you want to be told how it goes when people play. I have been thinking a lot about what I like and what I don´t like so much and I´m gonna try to explain what I think and how I think - as good as I can.
I really like the whole of the game, the package, the feeling, the take on the genre och concept. I like the thinking that runs through all of it. I like the texts in the beginning, the texts about why to play, why to play the different skins, the texts about passing, about the abyss, etc
I like the different skinns- they seem oh so right. I love the different concepts and the take on them.
I like the principles, they really work. Accept people conditionally have been really useful, when I remind myself about it, it always leads to interesting stuff. The same is true with "make the characters feel unaccepted"- sometimes I forget it, and game seems less interesting. Then I remember it and suddenly the characters arn´t heroes anymore, they are outcasts. That´s good.
The system with fires seem really useful, I havn´t really tried it yet, but I looks more useful than Fronts (which I have struggled to actually use in game, not just do as a work burden between session, and then forget in game). I miss Stakes and Countdowns, I feel those two mechanics really give me "food" as a MC- with Stakes I get a feeling for what it is all about, countdowns make me stress the players and the world seems really real when (disastrous) things starts to happen off-screen.
I really like how I fill in the first session work sheet, it was a great help to define everyones wants and means. Good stuff!
You have communicated the genre very well!
So what do I like less?
Overall it seems like there is a bigger gap between fiction and mechanics than in AW- I more often wonder what somethings means or looks like in fiction than I did in AW.
There is also a problem with this:
But you want the PCs to be getting Strings on one another, forcing one another into ugly situations, fucking one another, making promises to one another, loving one another, betraying one another, and doing horrible things for one another.
The PCs shouldn't ever "team up." They can depend on each other, and they can even do things to save one another... but they should never be...
As a group we really liked this, as a MC I liked it- before play we all said- you should love each other, hate each other, fuck each other- the game is about you not about you and the NPCs.
But we didn´t do it.
We arn´t used to a game where we fuck and love each other, we fuck the NPCs and then get into fights among each others about that. For the above statement to become true the game must have much "harder" mechanics to force it that way. No gaming groups (I think) are used to playing with the focus on the PC-PC relationships.
And the strings-setting in the beginning didn´t give us that start either. None of them started with those kinds of relationships. The strings setting didn´t give us that.
So.
The strings are all about PC-PC interaction. It kinda works ok, but not great, to have strings with NPC- you can get +1 on the next roll or do one more damage, but that´s about it. Strings wasn´t made with PC-NPC interaction in mind, and that seems obvious.
If PC-PC interaction (love/ sex/ hate) is not a bigger focus than in an average AW-game, the strings are not used so much. The players will still use strings, but mostly they will move against NPCs. And then the String-system doesn´t really work. It doesn´t say "umph"!
There are so many NPCs, it´s rare that the PC have a string against the person he moves against. And the strings are less powerful against NPCs.
So.
Many of the moves on the skinns are about gettings strings, or getting xp. That´s rather dull. If I´m playing a Fay and Mrs Sumers, the werewolf NPC has killed my sister and I want revenge. What do I do? In fiction, I try to get Mrs Sumers to promise me to do stuff, and make her brake her promises. (will it rain, do you promise?) So that I could do what... what happens then in fiction?
In mechanics, I get strings on Mrs Sumers. I could build a powerstock and move against her some sessions later.
It all seems not really connected mechanics-fiction somehow. It seems like a boring build-phase before I kind get back at Mrs Sumers.
As a fae I would like to be able to stop time, walk between dimensions, walk into dreams, find gold pots and stuff, charm people, make things look different, etc
The Ghoul can do almost nothing with his moves, but we have been through that. I would like something like The Faceless. Breaking through stuff, being really strong, hurting people by accident. Short rest for the wicked seems rather close to Becoming your darkest self instead of dying.
The witch is the best of the three. I like coven and the hexes. I also like transgressive magic. The witch is cool.
Maybe I have another take on the moves and power. Perhaps the characters shouldn´t be able to do powerful stuff? I think they should. It´s fun to lose temper as a ghoul and tear people apart- or isn´t it?
The basic moves are good with a few exceptions.
I miss read a person (and read sitch)
I do not know when to use shut someone down, it never becomes obvious in the fiction when we play, as manipulate och lash out- which always are obvious. So we never do Shut anybody down.
When you try to keep it together seems to have options that are non-intuitive to me. I don´t really know what to do with them.
Run away from something has given us lot´s of fun.
Nobody has gazed in to the abyss. Don´t know why. Seems cool to me. One of the playser said "it only gives answers..." but thats what Open up your brain does too, and they use that move all the time when we play AW- gotta ask them next time we play.
Hope this will give you some feed for thoughts!
Best wishes!
/ Nils
Ps would be great to hear about someone elses experiences too- maye they have interpreted the game differently- and then these things really arn´t problems
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