Yesterday, drivingblind and oletheros came over to the De-Luxe Apt in tha Sky-y-y, so I could run the second local S7S "gamma" playtest.

Short form: It went really well.


Longer form: I am running the local gamma games from a continually revised 15 page distillation of the much, much larger beta manuscript; effectively, I'm running the gamma games from the eventual "S7S handout." At this point, the beta manuscript is serving simply as reference material.

By doing this, I am able to quickly test/determine which rules and elements work well, which need to be tweaked, and which need to be patched. I revise the handout after each local gamma session, will then use it as a guide to revising the main manuscript.

Rules Test Results:
* Setting the Dials: Scope of mystic powers (what is a "board-changing" moment?) needs to be added to Setting the Dials.

* Challenges: Flashy Challenges work better now, after some tweaking.

* Duels: Need to revisit to make sure that every character, PC or NPC, gets a Turn in the rules text, and determine between Turns and "exchanges." Successful test of PCs vs. PC-grade NPCs.

* Skyship Rules: TESTED and FUNCTIONAL. The players here had effectively an average (PC) Captain, an optimized (PC) Helmsman, a tweaked (GMPC) Master of Guns, and a optimized for defense skyship. They held out extremely well versus an (optimized for sneakiness and defense) pirate skyship, run by a fairly optimized NPC Pirate Captain. Needs a bit more testing, esepcially at outliers (very high and very low) regarding skill and numbers of PC crewmembers.

* Character Generation: Works well; how Techniques are picked is different from last time, and works better.

* Ellipses (advice on narrating your actions) and Ephemera (a type of reward) added and tested.

* Training Points: Recosting calculations continue.

And that's all of the rules stuff, I think. Fred, Matt -- anything to add?

This is the setting that the pair of them came up with: a bunch of Sha-Ku (koldun, Gifted, and others) have taken the wreck of a Barathi schooner and modified it with their strange native materials and magics. Now, the prototype Ten Thunders -- possibly the fastest ship in all history! -- speeds across the Great Sky, looking for adventure and fame.

I think this phrase sums up the Ten Thunders: "lighting-powered, rocket afterburner, sky-sailing ship." (They seem to snap the masts off fairly regularly, when they extended the lighting rods to suck in thunderbolts to power their foul kolduncraft rocket-device.)

Their first adventure involved a skyship combat and some shipboard dueling versus the crew of the Red Swan -- Captain Jeanette of the Brethren of the Skull ("Pirate Jenny"), the koldun Taan of the Thunders, the ex-Musketeer duellist Black Rupert, and a handful of pirate Minions.

Again: a simple concept led to a good solid three hours of fun play. Plenty of great moments like the "duelling teleoprts" between Fred's character Rico and the NPC Taan, as they blinked between the ships. Matt's Kolomai pulling of an incredible bit of manuevering through the Jungle Sky, only to have Pirate Jenny (in the much larger Red Swan) follow him -- granted not quite as nimbly. The fact that everything the characters -- especially Rico -- did completely tagged every single Foible, Technique, and Motivation of the NPCs, optimizing every one of their responses (totally unplanned by the way; it was freaking eerie, because I statted the NPCs on Wednesday).

For example: Rico teleported onto the Red Swan and gave an order to the Helmsman, goosing it with a mind control/charisma power. "Go that way!"

Unfortunately. The helmsman of the ship was Pirate Jenny herself, the Captain. No one gives the Captain orders on her own ship. Who (in her backstory) had been captured into Barathi slavery, and eventually won her way free, Pirate Jenny, whose overriding Motivation is Freedom.

That one moment of stolen control ensured that Rico would now be Pirate Jenny's enemy.

Huzzah!

Tags: asmp, evilhat, game design, gaming, pdq, s7s, work journal, writing