Hi there,
Thank you so much for this game! I am looking forward to introducing it to others at a convention this weekend and have compiled a little cheat sheet that I wanted to share here:
The lessons learned are just my impressions from my first round and listening to you and Jeff Stormer, yet I still hope it’s a piece of fan art that can be useful for other people as well.
It was a blast and fireworks of creativity! The five of us were really hyped to play the game (I was the only one who had) and after Pillar generation I could already tell that this would turn out great. It got even better in play - and funnier than I had thought it would be (might’ve also been because of a good safety tools discussion).
We had all playbooks in use and the conflicts between the different “heroes” really supercharged the whole thing. The Paragon and the Hardline in particular really stepped on each others toes all the time, while the rest of us had strong internal conflicts. The Contrite had a hilarious double life going on as a public intellectual and a brawler by night, until cold, hard logic got in his way again. The Detached was really quite alien and kept people at a distance just by being from a fire planet. The Heir struggled with her morals and slowly drifted away from taking on the Paragon’s mantle towards the Hardline and their methods.
Throughout we really enjoyed the breakdown mechanics and the destructive moves, but I am glad to also have reminded people about them multiple times; they might not have come up quite as much in a one-shot otherwise and really paid off. Do you personally consider it more of a one-shot game?
Additionally, dividing up the main responsibility in a Belonging Outside Belonging way also worked very well for us, perhaps a little less so for the enigma. That got the whole story going but was not very present otherwise, also since the player felt she did not want to enforce her vision of the plot on the rest of us. Have you seen that more often or is it even intentional?
As a whole, we were really thrilled and a couple of the players or their friends already bought the game afterwards. We did wonder whether it’s generally a game that requires a bit of story game/RPG experience since some of it is quite open to interpretation and the double roles of mask and pillars require a good feeling for tension and arcs. For this con (3W6 Con) where people have played a lot already, that made for an outstanding game. In true Watchmen-style, I could however imagine a play example or ideas to consider as a book-fragment tacked on at the end, should you ever wish to update it.
If you’d like to know more about any aspect, just let me know! Thanks again for the game.
Really loved reading this, thanks for sharing!
I've honestly not heard many stories from people playing the game, so it's really nice to hear! I'm really glad everyone had a nice time and got to explore some interesting character dynamics.
To answer your questions:
No, I don't see it as more of a one-shot game or a campaign game. I designed it for both. The game was initially conceptualized for a campaign though.
I've never seen that happen with the Enigma, but I think it's honestly fine that it went that way. Your table decides what comes up in your story more often, and I really love that about the system.
In response to this game requiring RPG experience, I don't think that's necessarily true but it certainly helps a lot. I think it depends on the person though. Experience with the genre helps, but so does just analyzing the game itself. There are a lot of paths to understanding.
Thanks again for all this! I'm so glad this game is being played at cons, it's really awesome.
