OK, last night we had the first playtest of Solipsist (a game about bending reality), which I'm doing the layout for, as well as some art and, as it turns out, publishing. David Donachie is the guy who came up with the game and he's retaining full creator ownership of it.
The cover is a rather fetching green...
...and you can see it including the back-page blurb here.
I was GMing, and John, David and Victoria were the players.
We got through character creation, which went OK. All the players ended up with interesting characters with a nice mix of Obsessions and Limitations. We need lots of examples to help guide players and I should get David to write up 6 example Solipsists, or something...
We then had a couple of scenes where they were trapped by rising floodwater in a rural village in England (how newsworthy!). It was centred around John's character's house and the nearby church on the hill, which possibly has some Shadowy malevolence attached to it.
We staggered through the conflicts and it was very useful to find what did and didn't feel comfortable in the procedures of play. Some sort of turn order or free-and-clear needs to be in there. So that was good to feel out.
Because of that we now have a good idea on what to formalize as "the order that things happen". John was a bit thrown by the interpretation of "narration" (and David was a bit unclear on who talks when) and some clarity there should stop players feeling de-protagonized when their obsessions take over. The key is that someone else has the authority to say "that's not wild enough" but doesn't necessarily stop John from describing his obsessions going wild, or from him contributing to the story. Just that he can't have it as he would have originally liked it.
Once we had seen the mechanical fallout of bending reality John had shot up in Infestation and David had gained a Tear. Victoria had failed a couple of times and had her limitations getting ticked, which are grounding her to reality. All very nice I thought.
So it all went fine for a playtest I think. We have to follow through in a couple of weeks with another session.
Having visible target numbers worked really well too. There are times you'll spend the Infestation (you have it lying around needing burnt) and times you won't (it'll put you near getting a Tear or you're keeping it for a bigger effort).
Sounds intriguing, and
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Thu, 26/07/2007 - 09:22.
Sounds intriguing, and highly topical! Who or what are the opponents in this setting?
What is infestation and tear?
Was David playing in the game? How did it feel playtesting a game for someone, whilst they played?
Well, the opponents are
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Thu, 26/07/2007 - 11:51.
Well, the opponents are two-fold. (i) Yourself, I suppose. Since your character may become either too grounded in reality and become mundane, or become too self-centred and disappear from consensual reality into your own solipsistic existence reality, (ii) the Shadows, a nefarious un-making force that rips and consumes reality, which naturally you are opposing.
A character has no stats or skills. They are described by just their Obsessions and Limitations. Obsessions allow you to bend consensual reality to your obsessed will, while limitations dampen that ability and ground you to the consensual reality of the world.
You also have Infestation, which is how much of these things called "animacules" are currently buzzing about you. These are the very fabric of reality and make up everything we believe to be true. If you have no Infestation then you are realying on just your own obsessions to do things. When you do wildly reality shifting things you also attract animacules to you (as you are more interesting to them). These animacules are also able to be used to make changes possible.
Tears are when you rip reality too much, and can allow Shadows to enter and eat reality. If you have more Tears than Limitations you also get torn out of the consensual reality.
Yes, David was playing in the game and it was OK actually. David when he wrote it thought the game would be like X, and now we're finding out how close that is, and what is different. So it's useful that he's stepped back from GMing to just playing it. That way he focuses on playing the game, and then reflecting on how close it was to his vision. Also it allows him to see what he has, and hasn't, communicated in the text and rules to me!
Mage?
Submitted by Per Fischer on Thu, 26/07/2007 - 15:41.
This sounds very Mage-ish. Is it?
Per
darkplaces.squarespace.com
With a dash of nobilis
Submitted by Andrew Kenrick on Fri, 27/07/2007 - 11:06.
With a dash of nobilis thrown in for good measure!
Hi Per and AndyYes, I think
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Fri, 27/07/2007 - 12:35.
Hi Per and Andy
Yes, I think conceptually it taps into what Mage and Nobilis are about. I'm not sure how aware of those David is, but I'm confident enough that it's not influenced by them. Rather they all share many of the same roots and inspirations.
I do feel that Mage, while it offered a maleable reality, really compartmentalizes things into "splats", which didn't sit well with the concept really in my opinion.
The tribes of Mages also seemed to back away from what was a powerful idea -- people capable of bending reality in any way.
I think if people like the hook of Mage or Nobilis, or similar games and stories then Solipsist will satisfy.
Good Mage
Submitted by Per Fischer on Fri, 27/07/2007 - 13:49.
I did come across, from reading your AP and the blurb on the cover, that Solipsist could actually be an interesting king of Mage, free from all the things (traditions, metaplot, Storyteller mechanics etc.etc) that made Mage such a unsatisfactory RPG.
Mage was an attempt of a truly, potentially, philosphical RPG - Solipsist might just be the real thing. Man, if I had a penny for every discussion with solipsist/sophist-types I have had in my days ;)
Is the author David on this forum by any chance?
Nobilis I know absolutely nothing about.
darkplaces.squarespace.com
Not yet...
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Fri, 27/07/2007 - 14:02.
Yeah, I'm hoping it will satisfy those desires.
David's not on here yet, but I said I'd be posting here and I've prodded him to head over.
:-)
Prodded
Submitted by David Donachie on Sat, 28/07/2007 - 20:34.
Consider me prodded Gregor, I just had to wait for my account confirmation.
I am familiar with Mage, though not with Nobilis, but it wasn't really much of an influence on the design of Solipsist. The game that *does* have a big influence is the ancient STOCS Lite game Heretic, which is very similar in feel, if not in mechanics, setting or concept :)
Playtesting as a player was a salutary experience, because it pointed out the assumptions that my writeup of the rules made, and how they were different from what I might have imagined. I just finished this week an example play section for the rules (based loosely on the playtest) which made it a lot more clear how I would have expected play to go in an ideal world ... now we just need to make the rules support that!
My intention is to GM the next play session myself and try it from both ends.
yeah!
Submitted by Gregor Hutton on Tue, 14/08/2007 - 13:49.
Oh, I'm looking forward to some more sessions of this in September. I think David's stuff is pretty solid at the moment and we're all pretty happy with the refinements after the first playtest.