AP: Pass

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AP: Pass
« on: July 06, 2011, 10:02:33 AM »
My friend and coworker wrote up his play report in the style of a journal; he is a very funny guy, which I did not know until I had him as a player in an RPG - he's very nose-to-the-grindstone with a touch of bitterly sarcastic at work but he had me laughing uncontrollably several times during play.

The other players have promised play reports; if they come through I'll put them here too.  I had a great time MCing AW!  It was preposterously easy, other than clarifying the Seize By Force/Go Aggro thing (which enough folks have been through and over so that I was ready for it).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lDWm7-Xzag4mugzJaCVDxn8gYAp2_6tuo9DLmL-Fwgo/edit?hl=en_US

Re: AP: Pass
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2011, 10:38:05 PM »
Cool! Always nice to hear there's a good Dr. in the house.

Re: AP: Pass
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2011, 02:27:12 PM »
Very nice! A good read and informative for some like me who's only about halfway through the rule-book yet :)

So who were the players besides the author? Pearl and Abe?

As a future MC, I'm curious how you handle the times when characters are split up and don't necessarily know what's happening to the others.

My DM experience mostly comes from old-school RPGs where the party sticks together, so everyone knew what was going on. Although in Paranoia, there was a fair amount of note passing since everyone had secrets :)

Re: AP: Pass
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2011, 11:25:41 AM »
The other player was Iron Monkey.

Having four characters with their own agendas did pose some challenge to putting sufficient focus on each.  The two overwhelming methods I made use of were some immense external threats that required response from all the characters and, from time to time, simply saying "you and you are here and this is happening", which I believe is explicitly set out in the MCing section of the book as an MC prerogative.

There were a few more indirect pressures that motivated the players to involve their characters with each other.  One, the Hx rules (primarily the 'rollover' xp for 'who knows your character better') got them trying to get in one anothers' business.  Two, several of the character moves spell out NPC involvement, and those NPCs have relationships (of some kind) with the other characters (this is a basic implementation of the 'PC-NPC-PC triangle' discussed in the book).  Three, the other players' characters matter, frankly, and are doing interesting stuff, by their nature as protagonists; this is backed up by their being way tougher and more effective than anyone else, when they stay proactive.

Whoops.  I re-read what you asked - I didn't do much to enforce separation of character and player knowledge.  I am lucky to be playing with people who are either fairly entertaining or easily entertained, and so they usually remained interested in one anothers' scenes when separate, and also ignored or made use of out-of-character knowledge as appropriate to the table's enjoyment.

Now that I think of it, there was a bit of note passing, when Iron Monkey first began to draw antagonism from the other players, but I didn't encourage it - I felt the game handled both subtle and open antagonism between the PCs just fine, as did the people I was playing with.

Hope that helps!  Any questions are welcome.