Reckoning Playtest and Our Audience

This past week we got to run another Reckoning playtest while we were at Unco11.  The playtest was drifting the system a bit, outside the settings (modern) for which it is designed.  The situation was that the players would be in the midst of the Fourth Crusade, either Latins or Greeks.  If they had chosen to be the Greeks, they would be inside the city, centered on one of the monasteries in Constantinople, and their horror would be the impending doom coming down on them from the west.

The players chose to be Latins - their horror would be the horror of moral culpability as they sack and destroy cities of their brethren (Zara and then Constantinople itself).

The playtest went really well - the system works.  It does what we want it to do.  People have fun.  Every group tells us that character creation is the best part of the system, and it led to a lot of interconnection and buy-in among the players.

The players were basically a group of five who normally play D&D (one has called every character Ham Samich since he started playing in middle school) and one player deep-friend in the simmering vat of story games, someone with an entirely different gaming background, different expectations at the table.

What I suspected, what was reinforced, is that not only is Reckoning not a story game, it is potentially not fun for story gamers, unless they are interested in playing something like a hybrid.

It was interesting to see this person's discomfort.  We spent three hours after the session discussing the game, and it seemed like our story gamer enjoyed parts of it, but felt a lot of anxiety around the idea of a GM having lots of control over what was happening.

The thing is, the game is solid.  We know a little better about our target audience - basically, people who play D&D or other similar games will have a lot of fun with Reckoning and be introduced to a few ideas that don't exist in D&D.

We did what we set out to do.  We wanted to create an excellent horror rpg that we would want to play more than any other horror rpg.  That's what we have.  As a wonderful bonus, most other people who have played the game in the past have a great time with the game - all but one, actually, though I don't want to imply it was something wrong with this player.  It's just - well, not everyone is going to enjoy a given game.

This thing is sharp, man.  It does what it's supposed to do from a design standpoint.  We got some good advice from the one less-satisfied player that we need more time to consider, but what we really need is a rough draft to start having readers look at.

Recent Developments in V20

I'm very excited about the release of Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition - I've already ordered my own copy and it'll be a great early birthday gift when it comes out.  You can see the huge banner above.

I'm also following the open development process, reading and commenting in the few cases where I think I have something smart to say.  Here is some of what has been going on lately:

The Tzimisce Clan document is up, as well as the Gargoyles and Giovanni.  These have been out for a few days, but I was away at UnConference11 and didn't have time to do much reading while I was getting ready and certainly not while I was there.

I'm currently working on a one-shot to possibly run with friends while on vacation in a couple of weeks.  I actually don't expect us to have the time, nor for enough people to have the inclination, but it takes my mind off work.

With any luck, when my V20 book arrives in October, I'll have figured out the basics of keeping a human larva alive and will be able to have some bitey adventures.

Reckoning RPG Comes to Unco11

In a couple days I will be packing up, picking up a stranger, and driving nine hours to New York for UnCo11 (UnConference 2011).  While there I will get to hang out with cool people - among others, I will meet my semi-twin Mick Bradley at long last.  I say semi-twin because we apparently share a great number of interests, a birthday, and a denomination.  We seem similar enough on paper that he thought I was a spam-bot when I first contacted him.  I'm pretty sure I'm not a spam bot.

At least as far as I know.

One thing that we are hoping to do (we being me and Aric) is to run a session of Reckoning at UnCo11 for some people who are gamers and some who have never gamed before.  It occurred to me that I have not really run a playtest for more than two years, and oddly, I'm nervous.  There's always the nervousness of showing your creative thoughts and work to others - the very real chance that they will be thinking "what a load of crap" while smiling politely and trying to play through.  Maybe that's the reason I haven't worked very hard to find a writing group, I dunno.

With any luck, the game will happen and will go well.  Given the mixed group, as well as doubtless mixed sensibilities, and the fact that we're running a horror game, we had to be careful.  To stay with a religious theme, we're going to run this session set in and around the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade.  Hopefully we can build up enough moral horror at what was perhaps the greatest crime against humanity in medieval times since I'm not sure how comfortable anyone might be with other kinds of more immediate horror.

It's the kind of dicey balancing act that could go really well or could just as easily go off the rails and offend someone we don't want to offend.

I think I'll bring Mouse Guard just in case.