New this month...

I didn't mean to employ the "monthly digest/play journal" format for this blog anymore, but sometimes I'm bound to fall back to it when life-shit kicks in, apparently. Since last post I was pretty busy dealing with a metric ton of non-game-related things, but now that's hopefully over.
11/30~12/2 I attended both the Larp Symposium and arCONate — half of each, actually, since these were two unrelated events happening over the same weekend within a short distance from each other. The former was quite an awesome convention, in the non-gamer sense of the word: people with experience and interest in the field gathering at some place to talk about it! "The field" being larp and all of its cousins, with quite an awesome detour about "urban games" this year, which I used to know very little about. This being its third year, the Larp Symposium is finally beginning to come into its own, maybe deviating from its starting concept a little but with really exciting outcomes as the payback.
ArCONate is instead the now-classic format for a friendly and relaxed tabletop role-playing convention as increasingly seen in Northern Italy of late: the organizing staff is practically the same as Coyote Press, a majority of the attendees is from the GenteCheGioca forum, and the beer is great. There I experienced a new and very interesting chamber larp by Susi Ansaloni and Oscar Biffi — whose poetics of late is mostly to employ rarefied Tolkien-esque fantasy atmospheres as the backdrop for pretty intimate, personal explorations, while mixing in a number of Jeepform-like techniques with a traditional British-freeform like, "here's your character background" basic structure. I also played a very drunk session of The Questing Beast, and I feel a bit sorry for the one player I met there for the first time (I hope you were able to have fun despite me, Michela!). But… did I mention that Doktor Rafu's Achievement Unlocked Party is ongoing? And it won't stop!
Also, yesterday I was finally able to run a playtest of Ben Robbins's Kingdom with the current draft of the rules, even if it was cut pretty short by time constraints — a blight which sadly insists on plaguing my home games of late. Now I've gotta write a report, which is due by 12/20.

Monthly wrap-up for May

I’m being sort-of-busy, but I want to keep posting monthly updates about my role-playing experiences. Here you are, then: May 2012.

Long live the Kingdom

My biggest thing last month, in terms of effort and learning, was playtesting Kingdom, an interesting game in development by Ben Robbins (of Microscope fame). I played two one-shot, three-people sessions, one with Barbara and Alessio and the other with Barbara and Simone. I don’t really feel like describing the game at length, in the current stage, but I do recommend you join in for the next round of playtesting – whenever it might be – if you’re even remotely interested in politics as a topic for role-playing games. It’s a clever, novel design, using only the most basic of tried-and-tested building blocks, never trying to fit its in little-explored subject-matter through ill-fitting holes shaped like familiar techniques but rather carefully thinking its approach from the ground up. Reading the text got me pretty excited. In pratice, it didn’t play as smooth as I hoped it would: some subsystems are prone to cause stumbling or player fatigue, but those have been clearly identified are being redesigned – thus, my expectations for this game are very high.

As for the fictional milieu of our playtest sessions, for some reason we went twice for XIX Century settings: Carbonari in the 1820s and then railroad construction in the Wild West. While the Italian setting was the most intriguing one at first, I noticed that the western one made for more successful play, probably because we were significantly less concerned with historical accuracy, while having a huge background of previous fiction to work from (vis-a-vis a seriously underrepresented subject). I don’t think the issue is related to any particular feature of Kingdom, in other words: it would have been the same with almost any role-playing game.

A personal-level consequence of playtesting Kingdom, and then discussing aspects of it with Barbara, were some important realizations about the rules and practices of scene-framing, its toll on players and its relationship with protagonism and antagonism: I feel like I’m now getting to properly articulate some very fundamental issues I’ve been struggling with in play and tackling, somewhat unconsciously, with design (the newest and yet unreleased draft of Eden especially).

Big in the Alps

Last month as well wasn’t without a gaming convention. I was at GiocaTrento (in Trento, duh!) where – with Patrick, Erik and Jessica – I was basically in charge of the “indie RPGs” corner. I got there with a huge bag full of rpg books, which I pooled with the ones my local friends brought so that we were able to set up a table covered in indie-game-stuff: alluring covers, rough and curiosity- arousing home-bound booklets, assorted items (including a sheathed dagger for playing Mist-Robed Gate). The purpose being, of course, to make our games visible (despite the games themselves being actually intangible) and to have people ask us about them. Turns out we had it easy…

On Saturday afternoon, a chap named Alan, with whom I’d played a game of Fiasco at another meet-up months ago, voiced such an enthusiastic excitement about that game that in a second he gathered three more friends and we played 5-players Fiasco. It was a good Fiasco session, to boot! Somehow we ended up playing the wedding playset from the The Fiasco Companion using the standard Tilt and Aftermath tables (as opposed to the “soft” tables from that same book) and we got some pretty good, if crazily over-the-top, dark comedy out of it – with a healthy amount of sexy to boot. Good thing we were playing outdoors, or we’d have laughed the convention hall down! Thanks Arte, Riccardo, Vincenzo and of course Alan – I hope I got all of your names right.

On Sunday afternoon, Gaia, a girl from the convention crew, came to me holding my own It’s Complicated booklet and demanded we play that game – on the reception desk with another crew-member friend of hers, since they were both on duty. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. By pitching it to some more friends old and new, we assembled a huge seven people party to play the game. Thanks Gaia, Francesca, Gabriele the Incompetent Diplomat, Jackvice & his lovely lady and – what was your name, cute Polish girl? Seven-players It’s Complicated, yes. It would have worked, even, if not for the large number of interruptions due to, you know, playing this game at the reception table (in the end, we had to give up and cut the game short, sadly). We aimed for surreal situation-comedy, got some really crazy, cheesy over-the-top surreal comedy, and it wasn’t half bad. The bottom line, though, is that It’s Complicated really is a difficult game, in terms of – as my friend Carlo Rebagliati would probably say it – “keeping the fiction together” (la tenuta della storia, is something he’s always talking about), and that I’m now aching for a chance to play a really low-key game of it at last, with everybody really focused on exploring plausible human relationships and avoiding blatant absurdities. It will probably have to be a 3 or 4-players game (like my most successful ones to date actually have been).

In the mornings and the evenings (thanks to Patrick & Jessica, who hosted the night games at their place) I had the chance to try out a few new games myself. Boardgames aside (not usually my thing, but the ones we picked were “light” enough for me to enjoy and I had a good time), I played Vincent Baker’s Murderous Ghosts (in both roles) and Ben Robbins’s Microscope – two rpgs I had only heard about, and are now on my “must buy the books ASAP” list. I especially liked the potential for quick and fast play (though Microscope could also go on indefinitely if desired, of course).

Big heartfelt thanks go to Erik and his family, who hosted me.

A desert death-god was slain on the road to the City of Salt

This should be filed under June, actually, but what the fuck. I kicked off the month by playing Simon Carryer’s On Mighty Thews. My friend Tazio having had a sudden resurgence of excitation about that game, I offered to host a session, and was elected “GM” as a default; our friend Mario joined us in the game (and Paolo aka “Serenello” wished he could, but larger and meaner happenstances held him back).

Now, I’ve been playtesting – or, rather, successfully playing – On Mighty Thews since its first public alpha draft years ago, trying all iterations of it since then (I am, in other words, an OMT grognard who frequently confuses current rules with the ones from previous editions), and I still learn fine lessons from it. Or at least about it. I had, for example, the confirmation that three (GM +2 PCs) is the best number of players for this game – I’m now wary to ever do a foursome again, and curious to try a 1-vs-1 for a change.

The newest addition, I believe, to OMT are the Lore Roll rules. Man! In this run (the best one I’ve had using the “final” OMT rules) we really played the hell out of those, and did they pay off! By this, I don’t mean we overused them, either: au contraire, we learned that it’s moderation which brings the highest payouts – picking your Lore Roll targets carefully and sparingly, focusing on those things which really captivate you, maybe 1-2 per scene. Kudos to Mario for, basically, pacing Lore Rolls, and also for volunteering to take notes: he really showed me how Lore is OMT’s killer app! Tazio, otoh, very effectively used one such roll to make the adventure relevant to his own character, and not in the most obvious way. Good stuff.

Another relatively new addition (dating back, I think, to the last pre-final draft maybe?) is the use of a collectively drawn map. I love it because it’s fun on its own merit and it also ties in nicely with the Lore, providing a backdrop against which to hang those tidbits of information, acting as a springboard for ideas or, in retrospect, foreshadowing elements which may be (re-)incorporated. The downside is that since there are maps my OMT sessions have been lasting much longer, on average! While one could, theoretically, still do very short and to-the-point games confined in a single location, having a map on the table (no matter that how small an area it portrays) is a disincentive to that, and an incentive instead to go see some more views. Unfortunately, it’s not a good thing for an OMT game to drag out for too long: the rules are not designed for slow buildup towards a climax, but rather for abrupt, unconventional cuts, af befits their primary source materials. Draw as intricate a map as you wish, thus, but then exercise some restraint and try to keep your game confined to a couple locations, using the other ones as Lore backdrop only.

I also have a feeling that Lore and maps conspire to make long-term play an interesting possibility! To do so, I propose, one would aim for the episodic, for loosely connected short-stories woven against the common ground of an ever expanding, but never complete, tapestry – a method reminiscent of In a Wicked Age and Remember Tomorrow. I propose that to achieve this one could:

• keep notes aplenty, especially all of the Lore items;
• have everybody take turns at being the GM for a session;
• vary the cast of PCs and, ideally, the number of players from session to session;
• sometimes re-use a character exactly as s/he was, sometimes rewrite an existing character sheet from scratch;
• explore unused locations from old maps or make new maps at whim;
• assume anything could happen during “downtime”; do not assume chapters happen in chronological order.

Finally, I was reminded of why being the GM in OMT is both hard and weird: you can’t plan. And I don’t mean, like, plan one scene ahead. You can’t fucking plan anything. You know how little an Apocalypse World MC has to plan ahead? Well, that’d be way, way too much.

The Ivory Lioness, god-slayer.
Character and art by Tazio Bettin.

Monthly wrap-up: April snow & playstorming

Phew, last month’s been a hectic one! I went to Helsinki for Solmukohta (plus some sightseeing), then to Este-in-Gioco, I role-played even while traveling, made big promises I failed to keep, and run a 2-days-long playtesting of my major work-in-progress.

- § -

So, Finland… Over the ten days I spent away, I managed (in no particular order) to have a culture shock from sky-high food-and-beer prices and another from the easy availability of vegetarian alternatives everywhere, to contemplate the glum shores of the Baltic Sea with no little sense of beauty and awe, to improve my sauna-fu from kiddie-level to beginner-level and maybe learn where the green branches come from, to quickly grow relatively bored of the plainness of Helsinki as a urban landscape and cross the sea to visit Tallinn (which was a very pleasant surprise), to meet Eero Tuovinen in person (at last! and he doesn't even look more bear than man) and play Fables of Camelot with him (quite interesting and fun), to see for myself that heavy-metal is inexplicably tolerated as not-necessarily-the-antithesis-of-cool in Finnish culture, to try some delicious blueberry and lingonberry ciders, to grow more and more used to social nudity (and I’m finding it very liberating), to come out as weird to random passersby and girls in bars, to eat mammi (not bad at all, but I much prefer it with no milk/cream) and get tipsy on minttu and salmiakki, to crash into the most surreal and inanely drunken after-party ever (featuring a wedding between Claus and a teddy bear), to show off how I’m always my own fashion designer, exploit some German rules, fail at getting into a mask-induced trance, to make some lovely new friends and to meet some much-missed old ones again. But first and last thing, I had to wonder at the majestic, unforgiving craziness of a land where it snows in April (It! Fucking! Snows! In! April!) adding to the already half-meter-deep cover of unmelted winter snow which still chokes the ground (and ice-covered lakes!).

As for the Solmukohta/Knutepunkt proper, it’s always refreshing – rejuvenating even – to step for a few days into this alternate-reality world where role-playing is cool. Yes, that sums it. Nordic role-playing apparently succeeded in allying itself with its more mainstream cousins – arts and education – rather than quietly accept being marginalized as niche entertainment for geeky and socially inept people. And it succeeded at doing this while strengthened, rather than neutered, in its cultural relevance and political aggressiveness. The KP-going crowd mirrors those developments, consisting in a dazzling array of beautiful and enjoyable people who either experienced a personal growth thanks to role-playing or were attracted to the form while coming from a different (usually artistic) background and chose to stay: these people role-play, talk smart, are possessed of powerful political views, have a sense of dress and love to dance at parties (thus showing your average foreign attendee that the above aren’t inherently irreconcilable things). The level of the conversations one can enjoy, thus, is stunningly high.

The hottest topics this year, as represented in the convention program: use of larping/role-playing in education, and the feasibility of organizing larps as a day-job – both very concrete issues, spearheaded by successful early adopters. After two years of hogging the spotlight, by the way, jeepform appears to be forgotten, or rather digested, and nobody mentions it anymore. My personal highlight, program-item-wise: attending the method demonstration of Østerskov Efterskole, the Danish special school where they teach all subjects through games, preferably larps. I already knew about them from an article in LarpZeit, international issue #1, but now I feel like I know them, and it was a great, eye-opening experience. I was recruited to help out Emily Care Boss & co. with their demonstration of GM-less tabletop rpgs: I promptly accepted, not realizing the event was scheduled for 10:00 am on a Saturday morning [if that sounds harmless enough to you, then you have no idea of the kind of parties they throw at night during Solmukohta!], and then chose to demo Polaris, not realizing I was only to be allotted half an hour for that. To my surprise, I think the event – or my Polaris demo at least – was actually a success! Too bad that, afterwards, sleep deprivation exacted its toll from me, so that I failed to achieve much at all during Alex Fradera’s lovely mask-trance technique improvisation seminar (after a while I stepped back and just watched).

Naturally, more than a handful Solmukohta-goers disseminated the Internet with their own tales or even detailed diaries of the trip: there’s Thomas (who spends honeyed words about me and even notices my early morning samue), Lizzie, Lizzie again, you can’t have enough, Evan, John, Rafael, not to forget the Mike Pohjola… It’s actually a lot of fun to read them all, the same way it’s intriguing to hear different players’ stories after a larp: you get a feeling for a vast multitude of individual narratives that sometimes, just sometimes touch. Oh, and I haven’t been able to dig into the Solmukohta book, yet, but I will, word by word – also ’cause I want to have a hand in disproving Andrea Castellani’s malignant theory that nobody ever reads the book (and be sure I read the many books from last two years pretty thoroughly!).

- § -

As soon as I was back to Italy, I embarked in the pretty short trip to Este in Gioco, a gaming convention in the Padua area (in case you’re wondering how I manage to move around so much while being unemployed/broke: this time I was fully reliant on friends for driving me there, hosting me for the night, etc., so it cost me very little money to go). I’ve been attending Este in Gioco almost every year since a good while, and I was thrilled when I heard that the convention had finally moved into the very scenic town center of Este proper, in the park enclosed by the castle walls. It was then a bit of a disappointment, upon arrival, to realize that the whole convention was confined within a single pavilion and enjoyed very little visibility from the outside – even the posters advertising it were few, far between and small-sized. With the town being very lively on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I had hoped we were going to visibly invade public spaces and hook in random passersby to try out games! Nothing like that happened but, on the other hand, I wasn’t really prepared for that either – no easy, “introductory” games in my bag, nor colorful devices to show people I’m there. Board-games and the like have it easy: visible game components act as their own advertisement or, at least, as a token of existence; role-playing games, on the other hand, tend to be mostly immaterial, which also means they’re nigh-invisible. It’s telling that, as I and friends were attempting to gather players for an excellent mini-larp by Oscar Biffi, our attempts only turned successful after Oscar produced a bunch of wooden swords (which are, mind you, only employed as a costume prop in the larp, not actually used for fighting): now we had a visible, obvious cue that something was happening, and that we could leverage to break into people’s mind-space and ask them into the game. Anyway, a bunch of the usual suspects were there and I had a good time with them. There was a pretty sweet game of Mist-Robed Gate (how’s that for something visible which could be played in a public space to get some attention, by the way?) and much playtesting of friends’ work-in-progress designs: Dawn of a New Tomorrow by Davide Losito is turning out a very solid game, in fact, and I feel like through my vampire character I only played for a couple hour I was able to channel so much more angst and negative energy than I ever could express as a teenager – well done! And, you know, maybe next year we’ll be able to make the most from the convention’s new location and make role-playing games visible to the general populace (probably through specially designed events, or at least strong visual cues).

Also this last month, I’ve been playing lots of Remember Tomorrow – as a two-players game. It is indeed true that it works this way, almost as well as with three or more players, as its only feature which is directly hampered by the two-players setup is the (in my experience) very uncommon 3-way conflict; the game mostly plays as a string of 1-vs-1 face-offs (interspersed with monologues) anyway, even in a larger group. Since I and my sweetheart share a fondness for the subject-matter, Remember Tomorrow has become our default go-to pastime whenever we’ve got some time to kill: we played it in German international airports, onboard Baltic ferry-boats and while sunbathing on Italian beaches* (one just has to remember to pack the little bundle of playsheets and 8d10; small-change coins work well enough for Edge tokens). I feel like I’m now experienced enough with the game that I begin to notice its probable limits, but still I think it’s extremely good for a regular, you’re-not-sure-how-long-it’s-going-to-last game, and completing an “episode” (it took longer than we expected) left us hungry to start another one almost immediately (which we did).

* On the topic of sunbathing: yes, this is Italy, and in April we go to the beach. Sorry, Finland!

Finally, speaking of actual play in April, we summoned a bunch of friends to the usual place for what we call “a home convention” on 30^th and May 1^st. The original plan was to playtest Ben Robbin’s Kingdom, but as one of the players wasn’t jazzed with my synopsis of the game (too bad, since I’m extremely excited about it!) we went for Plan B: we set down to playtest my own I reietti di Eden — the first ever playtest for the severe rule changes I’ve been cooking up since version 0.2 crashed like a train-wreck. What actually happened over two pretty intense afternoons could better be termed a “playstorming”: new rules were made up on the fly to patch holes, and the whole thing barely held together, though the players unanimously reported having had fun. It’s crystal clear that some balancing still needs to be done before a playtest draft can be let out in the wild, but that’s the least of the discoveries made, and was almost expected. More critically, I have to give up on the idea that this can be a quick, convention-friendly one-shot game: it took us some 10 hours of play before we triggered the endgame, and most startling is that I liked it that way, since the rhythm of play was feeling perfectly right or at times even too fast; while I could theoretically re-design everything from the ground up, that would necessarily involve cutting away large chunks of play I actually have fun with. Better to quit my insistence on a one-shot game, then, and focus on the emergent strengths of the design, even if doing so will mean far less opportunities for playtests and, consequently, a slower development. Also, game setup methods (or lack thereof) came under some heavy fire, with “blank page syndrome” denounced as a universal issue: this proved fortunate, as it immediately generated ideas for a more structured setup phase, which I’m going to test out as soon as possible.
Besides, do you remember how I was supposed to translate the Italian finalists of the Game Chef? Well, while the feeling of being a “staff member” to the contest was great for me (and helped me cope with the disappointment for not being able to participate, the actual contest period overlapping almost exactly with my journey to Helsinki), I had no idea about the deadlines. Deadlines which actually came up when I was either off-line or presumed to be off-line (whether rightfully or not) by Giulia and Mario — the result being that it was Giulia, and not me, who did the job. To be fair, I suspect her to-English translations are vastly better than I could hope to achieve (I know she’s way more experienced than me there).