What follows is a transcript of playtest elements of a game that doesn’t exist. Which means the playtest lurks only in our heads. Which means, we’re probably crazy, and should be stopped before we kill again.
Dun dun dun! Crack of thunder! Shadow of meat cleaver just before it falls!
Or something.
Character Creation
Donnie: Okay, here we go. I want my character to be really strong, so I write down –
Gamemaster Tom: No, no, wait, don’t write anything down. I didn’t tell you to write anything down.
Donnie: I just figured –
Gamemaster Tom: Don’t figure. Wait for my cues. You have to wait for my cues! This is a new game, you can’t just… run off willy-nilly, writing all kinds of things on all kinds of pages. We have rules. Rules are what separate us from otters and carp.
Donnie: Otters and carp?
Sylvia: I hate rules.
Gamemaster Tom: Well, rules hate you, Sylvia. They do. They told me so in a text message. Now, are you two jizzbags ready to hear how this character creation thing plays out, or not?
Sylvia: Jizzbags is very hostile. And gross, because it implies a bag — like, a grocery bag — bulging with jizz.
Donnie: Yes. We’re ready.
Sylvia: All that sloshing.
Gamemaster Tom: Only thing you write on that sheet is your character’s name, then your name, and then your character’s concept. That’s it. Don’t worry about the five stats, yet. You determine your own stats in-game as it unfolds. Through conflict resolution, your characters are revealed.
Sylvia: Gay.
Gamemaster Tom: Using “gay” as a pejorative is…
Sylvia: Gay?
Donnie: Retarded?
Gamemaster Tom: No! It’s wrong. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it is equal to a man having sex with another man — which for some is a, a, a totally beautiful act. Jesus. Donnie, tell me your character’s name and concept, please?
Donnie: Okay. Here goes. His name is Snakeface Wizinski. He’s a Reptilian Lawyer. As in, a lawyer who is a reptile.
Gamemaster Tom: Fair enough. Sylvia?
Sylvia: I’m playing a Priest of Heracles named Ioioius. He’s a hunky stud who preaches the awesomeness of Heracles through the perfection of his hunky stud body. Boom.
Gamemaster Tom: Sure. Whatever. Okay. So, you guys are in transit to a place called the Cosmic Paisley Wormhole McHappy’s. It’s a fast food restaurant in the center of a wormhole, so located as everyone can get to it from all the distant corners of the Storyverse. You have in hand your coupons, each allowing for one free sundae. To get there, you’ve had to use public transportation, and you’re crammed onto a Space Bus –
Sylvia: Am I there?
Gamemaster Tom: I’m not talking only to Donnie. I’m looking at you when I speak.
Sylvia: Well, I don’t know how you roll. You know what they say about making assumptions
Donnie: It makes an ass out of u and… uhh. Mmmmpshun.
Gamemaster Tom: Yes, you’re both there, for Chrissakes. The Space Bus is crowded, and –
Sylvia: I think Ioioius really hungers for that sundae, and would like to speed up these proceedings, maybe get this Space Bus moving a little faster. I take off my shirt.
Donnie: I’m always confused about this. You speak about Ioioius doing something, but then you say, I take off my shirt, which sounds like you, Sylvia, are going to take off your shirt. Is there protocol for this? Can we decide?
Gamemaster Tom: There’s no protocol, it’ s just — it’s like how some actors refer to their characters, while others refer to themselves as the character, I don’t think it’s –
Donnie: It’s confusing is what it is.
Sylvia: You get confused by zippers, you fucking lackwit.
Donnie: Well, at least I’m not a monkey-faced whore!
Gamemaster Tom: Stop yelling! Sylvia! Your character, Ioioious, takes off his shirt, which will help us determine his first trait!
Sylvia: … okay. Fine. But I don’t know what that means.
Gamemaster Tom: Your character’s first action helps determine his first trait. His second action determines his second trait. And so on, and so forth, until you reach five. Why does Ioioious take off his shirt? What does he hope will happen?
Sylvia: I, or he, is too sexy to be contained. He wants to use his sexy bod to convince the Space Bus driver to speed this bitch up and get us to those sundaes faster.
Gamemaster Tom: Okay. So, how do you want to translate into a trait? We need a noun, but no adjective yet — those are earned later. You could go with something simple, like “appearance,” but the game seems to recommend you get a little more specific, if only for descriptive fun. Could go with “muscles,” or even, “pecs.”
Sylvia: “Narcissism.”
Gamemaster Tom: Excuse me?
Sylvia: It’s not that he’s sexy. It’s that he possesses a deep-seated narcissism that convinces him of his power. So, my noun is narcissism.
Donnie: Figures.
Sylvia: Shut up, Donnie.
Gamemaster Tom: No, no, Narcissism works as your first trait. Very cool. Okay, you spend your first trait, Narcissism, for the effect of –
Sylvia: Wait, I spent it already?
Gamemaster Tom: Yes, you spend it. In character creation, that demands that your next act of conflict resolution gives us a second trait. In the game, it works toward a strategic “resource management” component –
Sylvia: I’m sorry. I fade in and out. I don’t actually care. Go on.
Gamemaster Tom: In spending your Narcissism trait, you achieve success, and as this is the character creation portion, success is automatic and no chits need to be spent.
Donnie: No shits need to be spent?
Sylvia: Chits, you mule-kicked mongoloid. Chits.
Gamemaster Tom: Yes. Chits. Since we’re in character creation, success is guaranteed — conflict resolution gets a bit more complicated once the traits are determined and the game really gets going. For now, you succeed: the Space Bus driver, who is a grizzled dude with a hog’s nose and greasy hair, is bedazzled by your own deep-seated self-love. He’s only half-paying attention to the vehicle, now, and he leans forward, accidentally punching the accelerator as he ogles you, drooling.
Sylvia: I think you mean dazzled, not bedazzled, but whatever. Sweet. I like to think that my Narcissism trait is almost… communicable. Like a disease.
Gamemaster Tom: Because we’re in character creation, though, each success is mitigated by a consequence. So, yes, you succeed in speeding up the Space Bus. That also causes the other passengers to spill their drinks, or get motion sickness, or jostle into one another. Anger ensues. A riot erupts right here on the Space Bus. Donnie, Snakeface Wizinski is right in the middle of it. He’s about to be overwhelmed by rioting Space Bus passengers. What does Snakeface do, as a Reptilian Lawyer?
Donnie: He starts fucking biting people, that’s what he does.
Gamemaster Tom: His first impulse as a lawyer is to bite people?
Donnie: That’s how the people of his world engage in and enforce jurisprudence. They don’t win cases by who has the most convincing argument. They win cases by seeing who can bite more jurors. I just made that shit up. Right here.
Gamemaster Tom: Great. So, Snakeface’s first trait is…?
Donnie: I guess… teeth. Or, rather, fangs.
Gamemaster Tom: Sounds good. He starts chowing down on the other passengers, left and right, getting all bitey…
To Be Continued!
Conclusions
Right off the bat, I can tell you that these people in my head are very surly. I should endeavor to find a new group to make-believe playtest next time.
Still. They’re what we’ve got for now.
The primary design goal supported here is fast and loose. Some games, appropriately so, require one or two sessions of character creation before ever actually playing the game. Problem is, for our group, we meet so super-rarely that if character creation takes that long, we’re seriously cutting into our actual playtime. No good.
So, having a game that allows us — and you — to pick it up and jump right in is ideal. No messing around. It’s not dissimilar to how some video games handle it, these days. The Bethesda RPGs (Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3) help you determine your traits through the course of the game’s opening act, and having that here is useful.
Plus, it also represents how we write Shadowstories. We do so by the seat of our pants. We introduce characters that sound funny or interesting, and we make them up as we go. That’s not a recommended way to write most fiction, but Shadowstories isn’t most fiction — it’s a collaborative experiment in sci-fantasy amusement. By having character creation married to those initial steps into conflict resolution, it allows the players a modicum of, “Fuck it, let’s play.”
Next fake session, our group will hopefully tackle conflict resolution, and the complexities (or, lack of complexities) contained therein.
