So I ran this tonight, excellent fun was had by the Explosive Mage, food cult Nutjob Cleric, Conniving Thief and Twinky Shaman. They started on the run from the mob/city guard after their last misadventure, escaped (thru fast-talk and fire, a recurring theme) went on a quest for the Ultimate Spell (the Destruction of Magnus Varga), the Last Seed of the Great Oak-en, the Holy Golden Pizza Slice, and stealing said holy item.
In the course of reckless disregard for the safety of themselves and others, and an only partially successful selling out of the party to a Minotaur cultist, they found themselves as sacrificial toppings on the Great Pizza Stone (deep dish) of the heretic sect of food cultists (toppings first, then cheese!)
Things I found tricky, other can coming up with streams of nonsense...
- spouting lore, who says what the lore they are spouting about is? I had the players narrate things, then adjudicated based on the roll. This may or may not have been correct?
- felt I had to rush in a move to get a clue and just up and told them what the macguffin was (cause the great pizza maker to lose faith). I was running in a just over 2 hour slot, we were failing a lot of rolls, and I wanted to finish up with a win. Or at least a powered up Big Bang that blew everything up.
- I was also trying to fit in as many hearts desires in as possible, which may have been a bit much for a oneshot. But it was a conscious decision, and you do address this in the game text.
- the list of moves are very different from other AW derivatives, much less, well, hard. I did make people Fall Down where appropriate. I'd need to think about them more, the instincts about which to apply on failed rolls, and when you apply them (a lot of moves specify what happens on failure, do I still remove a clue or whatever?)
- some temptations are easier to invoke than others. Food and shiny things was easy, The mage self compelled bragging, but Telling Lies? Less concrete things seemed harder to fit in.
Things I could do better
- I didnt go through guts points thoroughly enough, we missed the use to avoid falling down, which would have made me feel better about that removal of player agency if we'd picked up on it.
-two of the players, one totally new to tabletop rpg btw, wanted to spend more than one guts point at once to boost a roll by 3. In fairness I don't think it says you can't, But I said no. Also no to the Shaman cursing herself, into a Dragon.
Things that went perhaps suprisingly well
- no one had seen much, or any, genre anime, and I've only watched a bit, so the alt-sell of silly DND and Diskworld got us through. Though one player had in his head this was a sendup of 12 year olds playing DND, which I guess isn't too far off base. The character sheets (we only read the phrase out loud, time constraints) moves and flavor text seemed to really get the players into the idea of the characters and genre pretty well, the players enjoyed reading and picking moves.
Things to do again
- prod and poke at the hearts desire until you get something concrete and pursuable. Then ask more questions.
But, everyone said it was a lot of fun, the players laughed a lot, so I'd like to say thanks for putting this together. A success!