lame mage productions

Wow, nice showing playtesters! We’ve got over 60 people this round. Not bad considering we’ve been playtesting this thing for over a year and a half.

The playtest deadline is the end of September. I repeat: end of September. If you want to have an impact on the final rules, you’ve got to speak your peace before then.

As always, I’m looking for actual play feedback, not just impressions from reading the text (of course comparing your impressions of the rules from before you played versus after you played can be great stuff). If you post about your game somewhere, link back here or drop me a line so I can find it.

The clock is ticking. Go play that thing!

After much time and careful revision (and re-revision), the new version of Microscope is ready for playtesting. That’s playtest version 4, if you’re keeping track.

If you’re a playtester, you should have already gotten an email with your download link. If I missed someone, contact me and I’ll fix you up (either in the comments, or at microscope-playtest + lamemage.com).

This looks like it will well and truly be the final playtest draft. Kick those tires.

In the build up to Go Play NW, I braced myself to facilitate pickup games every waking moment. As organizers we embraced the idea that there were going to be a lot more pickup games than scheduled games, but that’s also risky: you never know until the slot begins just how many people will be standing around without a game, or how many people will be ready to jump into the middle of the Power Donut and facilitate something. If the ratio is wrong, and you have more people than games, danger Will Robinson! Hence my staying on high alert, ready to fill in the gaps.

But lo and behold: because everybody brought the fun and were ready to run things too, I wound up kicking back and playing in games other people facilitated way more than I expected. Which was entirely surprising, but also pretty sweet.

The only downside was that I was so busy staying flexible, I didn’t schedule a single Microscope game. In fact, the only game I did schedule was the massive 16 person Mars Colony summit. But the people would not be denied, so by popular demand I put together a game Saturday night (oh no, twist my arm!). That was the only other game I facilitated all weekend, but Ping and Mike stepped up and filled the Microscope gap, with Mike running one during the notorious Lottery slot, and Ping running two.

So scheduling zero Microscope games, we wound up with four:

FRI-01 Microscope: The Box

SAT-03 Microscope: Venus-Mercury Wars

SAT-04 Microscope: The Age of Thought & the Catholic Church

SAT-04 Microscope: Godhead

(no thread yet for Mike’s SAT-03 game)

I had an excellent time playing Saturday night, and the reports of the other games have made me wish I was a fly on the wall. Kudos to everyone who played, particularly the brave souls trying Microscope for the first time. And double Kudos to Ping and Mike, for making those games possible.

One word of apology: lots of people played it, and loved it, and have been waiting patiently to play it more, but even though they asked nicely I haven’t sent them the new playtest rules, because I haven’t finished cleaning them up. I expect this to be the last playtest release (which is what I always say…) so I want to make sure the text is as complete as can be for the final test. I could go on about how the games from Go Play NW have convinced me that this version is the winner, but I’ll save my breath and get back to polishing so you can decide for yourself.

Ping and I will be trying out the latest and greatest version of Microscope at Go Play NW this weekend. If it continues to work as well as it has so far, I should be able to bundle up and send out the new playtest draft late next week, after the obligatory post-con collapse and recuperation.

And to everyone who’s been waiting with bated breath to help playtest: thanks for your patience. I think the improvements will be worth the wait.

I was kidding about the G thing, but it may turn out to be true.

We played what may very well be the final version of Microscope last night, and it was good. I don’t want to jinx it, and yes it’s going back out to playtesters, and yes, no promises, because I’ll probably think of something in two hours that I still think needs tweaking, but right now the parts that should be important are important, and what was rough is now smooth.

Tunnel, meet light.

“I start a campaign… a totally _fascist_ campaign.”
–brand new gamer, solving the problems of Mars

I love Mars Colony. It’s hands-down the best game I picked up at GenCon 2009. That’s not even considering that it’s technically only an ash can release, not the final version, which is coming out at GenCon this year.

The trick is that it’s not a game you would normally whip out and get your group to try, because it is for exactly two players, an entirely interesting and largely unexplored gaming niche (ask Ping). But I was determined to get more people to give it a try, and some of my fellow gamers were a) curious and b) tired of hearing me rant what a great game it was, so we bit the bullet and got a bunch of folks together — six as it turns out, but any even number works. I explained the rules and then we split into pairs and played.

Three simultaneous Mars Colony games, all in the same room at the same time.

The rules of Mars Colony, as written, are tremendously clear. Crystal clear. But this was me walking everyone through it verbally, explaining the concept and all the rules from scratch. The system isn’t complicated, but there are concrete mechanics that push the drama and must be understood for the game to work. Was I nervous? Was I braced for confusion and big disappointment? Oh yeah.

Keep in mind, one of our players had never gamed at all. One had played traditional games but no story games. Everyone else had a mix of game experience.

When you’re introducing people to a new game, you are usually in the game, so you can gauge how things are going, provide helpful hints if things are going off the rails, etc. In this case, not so much. I’m playing in my own game, but I’ve got one ear cocked to hear if the other players sound miserable, confused, or just plain bored.

So given all that, what was the verdict? The red planet is made of win, and the gamers in that room rocked. When you overhear brand new players launching fascist regimes an hour into their first roleplaying game ever… well that’s a success in my book.

After everyone hit their last progress scenes and were ready for the endgame, Susan (our fabulous hostess) had the bright idea of doing the epilogue sequences one group at a time, so the whole room could hear how Kelly Perkins had fared in her efforts to save the colony. We did quick summaries of what the different Kelly’s were like, what the issues confronting the colony were, and the roller coaster ride that ensued. There were some glorious victories and some bitter defeats. Some games had both.

Right when we were first setting up, one of the new players asked something along the lines of “could you really play this game more than once,” meaning, once you’d played out saving (or failing to save) the colony, would it be interesting to do it again? Just going by how different every game I’ve played has been so far, and by how extremely different the three games we had in that room were, I’d say the answer is an unreserved yes.

In addition to just being, y’know, super-fun, it was also a great test run of my plan to have a big group of people play parallel games of Mars Colony at Go Play NW. Lessons learned, refinements brewing.

* yeah, literally blew up, like with bombs. Nice one, Caroline.

With San Holo in mind, I’ve decided to offer The Chargen Circle in the last gaming slot of Go Play NW 2010.

The plan is to grab a bunch of random chargen systems, random being the salient part, and roll up characters. I’m thinking of systems like Classic Traveller, V&V, Reign, FASA Star Trek. I suspect people will make characters together which is more fun IMHO as one writes while the other researches and together you invent a story for the results, but whatever works.

Besides for the fun, I’m also doing this because I find myself pretty wiped out by Sunday night from three days straight of the most intense gaming. A certain amount of energy goes into running the show as an organizer, but I play nearly every slot from morning until night and half the time facilitate which takes even more energy. The Chargen Circle seemed like the perfect way to kick back, drink in hand, and close out the weekend before clean-up.

I know others will play ferociously until the end. I salute them from the bottom of my dice, and on Sunday I shall again while rolling apron colors for my Maids.

Playtested a big change in Microscope last night, and it looks like a definite win. Scenes are much smoother. They were fun before (usually) but now they flow. I need to tweak and double-check other parts of the system to make they do what they’re supposed to in light of this big change, but right now the verdict is: awesome.

(in hindsight, the last Microscope post should have been titled “E is for Events.” Does this mean the next issue I tackle in the game has to relate to the letter G? If so, I’m voting for “G is for Good-to-Go”)