So, last night we got together and played some
Spirit of the Century, since iago was kind enough to let me have a .pdf playtest version. I was a bit critical of my grasp of the mechanics, but everyone had a blast, and said they'd play it again.
The characters:
Gabby Gamble, plucky reporter and former socialite!
Son of Khan, mighty intelligent ape, exiled from his father's kingdom for falling in love with a human woman!
The Scarlet Spider, masked crimefighter!
Isaac Fury, master thief!
Character creation: this went slowly for a couple of reasons. One was that only two folks came in with a good understanding of pulp. The other was that, with only one .pdf copy, it was tough to get the crunchy bits distributed. There was a suggestion that I, as GM, should've explained some of the character creation process earlier, and that was valid -- things didn't start flying until Phases 4 & 5 (which people loved, and got very enthusiastic about -- it was mentioned several times how cool they thought it was). Even so, the idea that, for a pick-up game with a bit of lead time, letting folks do Phases 1, 2, and maybe 3 before coming in would be helpful. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that we were trying to run a one-shot in a five-hour block, and if we'd had a copy or two of the book to hand around, it wouldn't have been an issue. Some other points:
- People dug the Aspects, though it took a little bit for them to grok all the possibilities for them. We ended up with a lot of "quote" Aspects ("My knives are my tools of justice," "This plucky human reporter is the Son of Khan's friend!" "That's tomorrow's headline!") which ended up working out very nicely in play.
- The Stunt Quick-Pick Packages were very helpful. What i did was this: I let them pick out their skills from the player-focused lists with descriptions (which I'd printed). I'd also printed the QPPs, and I had people scan through the Packages associated with their top few skills, looking for the Packages that sounded most like the image of the character. Then I'd use a lap-top to read off the descriptions of the stunts from the Packages the players had liked, and let the players decide whether they thought the actual effect worked with their character. This actually worked really well, I thought.
- There was occasional confusion on what skills did what, since we were moving pretty quickly -- Alertness affecting initiative (though I did mention it) and thinking Empathy did what Rapport actually does, but they got cleared up in play, and I let people switch skills if needed.
First conflict: The players were at a fancy party, which they ended up defining as a celebration of a great white hunter who'd brought in a huge white lion. (This led to some great RP for Son of Khan.
) Warriors dressed in spider-garb attacked, focusing on the Scarlet Spider. They were quickly dispatched by the heroes, and the SS prevented their leader from suiciding like the rest. Under interrogation, he revealed that they were a distraction to keep her pinned down; the heroes returned to her hideout to find that it had been broken into, and the mask of her mentor -- the Black Spider -- stolen!
Some research in his old journal revealed that the mask had been the source of his powers, and that he had gotten it from the Cult of Spiders, for whom he occasionally had to perform heinous tasks, so that he could use his powers at other times for the greater good. It was also discovered that the mask would be needed for some kind of event set to happen in three days. Gabby made some Contacting checks that revealed that the only scholar on the CoS was a Dr. Krazlec, who claimed that the Cult was nothing but a legend; other experts on the Cult who claimed its history reached back to ancient Egypt had died in... accidents.
The heroes decided to hold a press conference to warn the public of the Cult of Spiders menace, which totally stumped me. (Dammit, they were supposed to hop a jet to Egypt!
) Luckily, Isaac wanted to break into the police station to get any information they had on the cultists who'd attacked them; so the party split up, and I got some time. Some other points:
- Players dug how scenes had Aspects to tag, as well -- Fate Points were flying.
- The minion rules worked very well, though I had to keep consulting the book to see when the bonuses should be lowered -- definitely something for the GM's screen!
- It took the players a little bit to get used to the specificity of the skill rules, and the intent-roll-narrate task resolution, but I think that may have been an expectation issue -- we've been playing a lot of very rules-lite stakes-focused games recently. But, once they adjusted, they really rolled with it.
- I handwaved zones, which really ended up messing with Gabby's gun use -- it was my bad.
- Also, since we didn't quite have a handle on how time worked, some of the stunts that reduced time didn't pack their full punch.
Second conflicts: Isaac rocked his rolls to get into the station, and discovered that they had been unable to find any info on the ID of any of the cultists, though they did note that the cultists seemed to come from all over the world. At this point, a well-dress handsome man clad all in white -- except for a single black tie-pin in the shape of a spider -- showed up to claim the documents. A battle ensued, with the man -- dubbed the White Spider -- being captured once the Scarlet Spider burst in to help.
Meanwhile, at the press conference, someone sealed the doors of the building shut and set the place on fire before the conference could begin! Son of Khan and Gabby managed to get everyone to safety.
The team came together again to interrogate the White Spider, with Gabby coming through with an amazing Rapport roll that not only got him to talk, but made him infatuated with her. He revealed that Krazlec was the leader of the Cult, and that he was in town to use the mask to release the Many-Eyed Queen, the Cult's dark goddess, from her millennia-old prison... and that rather than happening in three days, it was happening that night! He also agreed to become Gabby's photographer, and make a new life for himself.
- This was the first fight against a named character, and it took a while, just because named characters are so darned resilient. However, everyone was making good use of maneuvers to put Aspects on folks, and then taking advantage of the free tags.
- I think I fell too much into the trap of letting my descriptions get "whiffy-y". "I use my knife to pin him to the ground by the arm!" *rolls* "Hm, sorry, you just barely miss, scraping down his chest." I should've used the open nature of the conflict to say things like, "You land on him, your knife pinning him to the floor. Unfortunately, his twisting meant you got more cloth than flesh, and he's able to use your momentum to roll you off of him. You flip and land on your feet, so your both up, though he's bloodier for it."
Final battle: So, they went to the Natural History Museum, where the White Spider had told them they would find the Cult. The final battle had Isaac ripping the mask from Krazlec's face -- taking some of said face with it, and denying Krazlec the physical enhancements the mask brought, the Son of Khan almost being overwhelmed by ten warrior-cultists, Gabby Blathering five more into what was, for all intents an purposes, submission, and the Scarlet Spider gaining revenge for her dead master. It kicked butt.
- Again, the minion rules worked very well -- the smaller groups went down like tenpins, but as the groups got larger, they got much more dangerous.
- This was when the player really started to feel at home with the Stunts. Of all the character traits, those were the toughest for them to grok.
- Aspects, on the other hand, got great use. They ended the game with very few Fate Points, and everyone used just about all of the Aspects on their sheets at one point or another in the game, which impressed several players to comment on it.
All in all, everyone told me they had a great time. If I was critical of anything, it was my own performance, as I think I could've been more open, and definitely more on top of the rules. (Though my players have assured me I'm being too hard on myself.
) I know I'm snagging a copy of this baby when it gets printed, and I think a couple of other folks might, too.
(This was also posted on iago's LJ, and there's a pretty keen discussion happening over
there.)
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