Warning - Super-long post!

So, time for an actual play from a playtest session of Summerland. This is from memory, so I can't remember all the details, but here we go. Myself, Phil, Adam and Craig were playing. Phil and Adam are long-term playtesters, I narrated (GM'ed), and Craig is new to the game so the first thing we did is run through the background and the mechanics. All pretty straigfhtforward, took around ten minutes. The mechanics are pretty much as described in the previous post (in the design section), with the following changes. 1) I've stripped down and simplified the game engine, pulling out a lot of the stuff that isn't directly related to play. 2) Traumas and stress are linked very closely now. Traumas start at 5 and the aim of play is to reduce them to 0 - at this point the character is ready to be accepted into a community, and they have achieved the aim of the game. You now invoke traumas in play to reduce the number of dice you roll by one, and if any of the dice rolled comes up as a 1, you reduce your trauma by 1 point. However, if the highest value on any dice is a 4, a 5 or a 6, you also reduce your stress level from 5 by 1, 2 or 3 points respectively. If this reached 0 you flip out, so invoking your trauma can push you over the edge. When stress hits zero you stress out and can no longer invoke your trauma until the stress is recovered, which can only happen if you are accepted for a short while into a community. So that's the gamble - invoke the trauma to make a task easier and resolve it, but risk stressing out. 3) Now traumas are listed after character creation as a short line of text (see below to see what I mean). Every time you invoke your trauma you add a little bit of text, fleshing out the trauma. In this way you build up your character's past through game play.

Character creation - took ten minutes.

Craig had a sporty type called Jarrod with high finesse and empathy (a fit chap who's also a nice guy), and a trauma line 'car crash'.

Adam had a doctor called Sarah with a high mind and reasonable body (a blunt, rather hard woman), with a trauma line 'medical emergency'.

Phil created a large overweight fellow called William with a high body and empathy but poor mind (a bit dumb but very friendly), with a trauma line 'it was dark and raining outside'.

Then we were ready to go. Everyone seemed happy with character creation, and Craig got the idea very quickly. The tags were easy to think up (I can't remember them all, examples were 'friendly', 'good at cricket'(!), and 'blunt'). I'll summerise the scenario to keep this shortish! This was an ad-lib scenario, strating from a vague idea and spun out in play.

The PC drifters (changed from nomads, much better name) came across a settlement. They were welcomed into the settlement, and had a discussion with the leader. He said a number of children, 3 boys, had disappeared very recently, leaving tracks that led into a nearby area of Deeps that the normal folk wouldn't enter. This was unusual because not many people were lost to the call - everyone was watched overnight to make sure they didn't succumb. It seemed like the boys had deliberately snuck away. If the drifters would check the Deeps out for any sign of the kids, then they'd be welcome to stay a while. They agreed.

Craig suggested they question another child who know the kids, a girl called Jenny. This was resolved as a conflict - Craig's character trying to persuade the child to talk, the child trying to avoid revealing anything to the scary stranger. Craig created his score (see the other thread in game design for what this means) and rolled two dice as although it would be pretty hard to get the girl to talk, these were adults after all and she was a good girl who answered to adults. I generated the girls score (using the a quick method for incidental NPC's) and rolled two dice. Craig won the contest and narrated that the child opened up to him a little. I said he found that the biys were friends and often snuck onto the barricade walls of the settlement. When the first went missing, the others wanted to know where he'd gone. She disin't know anything else.
Next day the PCs and a guide, Leroy, who'd bravely volunteered to show them the way, set off for the Deep. It took most of the day to get there, with the only encounter being a pack of animals that were heard in a clearing ahead. When the PCs got there the beasts had gone, leaving dog type prints and a single print of a naked child's foot.

It was dark when they reached the edge of the Deep, with the forest eerily quiet and oppressive, so they set up to spend the night. They bound Leroy so that he didn't wander off in the night (i.e. answer the call). Two of the PCs stayed in a tree with Leroy, the other kept watch at the foot of the tree with a torch in case anything happened. The players were all a bit sketchy here, having obviously not through about how they spend the night in the woods! I said they had some basic camping gear (after all they camp in the woods regularly), and Leroy had brought some useful stuff (for example a torch!), so all was not lost.

All of the journey was narrated with no die rolls.

During the night Phil's character on watch at the foot of the tree heard a noise, and truning on the torch saw a naked boy at the edge of the clearing. He shouted to wake everyone up, and then called to the boy using the name of one of the missing children. The child looked confused and slipped away, just as 6 wolves rushed silently into the clearing, going straight for Phil's PC. He decided to scarper up the tree, so we resolved a finesse conflict - Phil trying to climb to safety, the wolves trying to bring him down. Phil won (just), and narrated slipping away from the snapping jaws. After a few minutes the wolves departed.

The PCs waited awhile and then climbed down the tree and hastily started a fire. They assumed the wolves had killed the boy but considered it too dangerous to follow at night.

The next morning, they took the groggy and dazed Leroy (the effects of the call) and followed the wolf prints. There was no sign of the boy, apart from the odd indistinct footprint. The tracks led to a narrow ravine. Adam's character tried to scale the sides, but failed her attempt, with me narrating the consequence of her losing a her footing and sliping down again with a minor scrape. So they all pressed on down the ravine. The path led to a cave. Craig's character elected to stay outside with Leroy, the other two entered with the torch. The place stank of animals and urine. A few feet in, they came across knawed bones amid ripped clothing with the doctor thought belonged to a child. They were both a bit nervous at this point. Just then, a child called out from the dark, asking if they were his friends. Phil's character tried to persuade the disembodied voice that they were, while Adam called Craig's character in. The child said 'you're not my friends, just like Andrew' and five wolves flowed out of the darkness toward the nearest character, which was Phil.

A brief discussion between the players persuaded Phil to stand up to the wolves (he wanted to run away), using the hatchet they'd taken from Leroy. I said if he did so it would be a roll of four dice (very hard). The wolves would roll two (it's pretty easy to overpower one man when there are five of you!). At that point, Phil decided to invoke his trauma. He though for a few moments and noted down 'they made me do it' beneath his original trauma line 'it was dark and raining outside', telling us that it was just like when the bad thing had happened to his character William, when they made him do it, just like they were making him fight these wolves. I thought that was cool and allowed it, so Phil rolled three dice instead of four in a straight body conflict with the wolves. The wolves won and the margin of victory was enough to inflict minor distress to Phil's character's body quality, so I narrated how one of the wolves latched on to the PC's arm as he tried to swing the axe, bringing him down and ragging the wound, not enough to kill but enough to make actions that involved that arm a lot harder. Phil didn't roll a 1, so there was no reduction on the trauma scale, but he did roll a 6, losing three points off his stress scale.

As this all took place, Adam's PC (holding the torch) caught sight of the naked child, and Craig's rushed in to grab the boy, trying to make him see they were friends. The boy started crying and the wolves dispersed, leaving them alone with the child. In the back of the cave they found another boy alive but ragged, who says that the naked boy 'made his friends hurt Andrew'. The naked child was silent and sullen. The doctor cleaned Phil's PC's woulds and they set out to return to the settlement.

On the way back the sullen naked boy started muttering that 'his friends were coming back' and that 'they'd show him like they did Andrew'. Attempts to persuade him they were friends failed at this point. This was the coolest bit of the game, as the players discussed what to do with the kid as they wouldn't get back before nightfall. Adam's PC (who was a bit of a bitch!) wanted to knock the kid out and take him back unconscious. Phil's PC wanted to leave the kid, and Craig's was set on getting him back and rehabilitating them. They asked me if that was possible (rehabilitation that is), and I said you don't know, so they had a real dilema. In the end they decided to risk taking the kid back. They settled for the night in a wrecked car, tying Leroy and the traumatised boy in the front (so the call wouldn't get to them) and leaving the wild kid in the back while they sat on the roof and nursed a huge bonfire through the night.

It was about 3am when the wolves arrived, circling the car. The wild boy said 'you're not my friends, so they're going to get you'. Craig tried to persuade him they were, and decided to invoke his trauma. After 'car crash' he wrote 'a child was involved', telling everyone that this scene brought flashbacks of that terrible crash. I allowed that so he rolled one less dice trying to persuade the kid (a conflict of empathy). Craig's PC was successful but didn't roll a 1 so no reduction on the trauma scale, but he did roll a 6 losing three stress points. The boy said, 'ok, I'll get them to leave you alone for now. They're my friends though, my best friends'. He got out the car and left with the wolves.
The rather dispirited band made their way back to the settlement at day break, explaining all that happened. They were rewarded with an invitation to stay for a while (enough to regain lost stress), but only a few days (they were all suffering from the full effects of their traumas as none had reduced their values). The last thing I told them was the sound of the mother of the dead child and of the wild child wailing into the night.

Overall, everyone had a really good game. They were all very engaged by the story, and had a real decision about what they wanted to do with the child. The mechanics worked well and were unobtrusive, and there were no superflous bits that either got in the way or were redundant. We also learnt a little more of what had traumatised Phil and Craig's characters, which was cool. It's the first playtest were I didn't want to change anything in the rules, and the trauma rules worked really well, adding to the drama and creating a sense of depth and revelation to the characters. Overall, I was chuffed!