Microscope RPG: Review and Actual Play

This last Friday at Magpie we changed things up for the first time in quite a few weeks, and instead of Warhammer Fantasy we played a new indie RPG called Microscope.  Josh couldn't make it, so it was just me, John, Armaghn, and Emily.  This apparently worked out well because the game is meant to be played with 2-4 players (which btw is my only complaint so far, because that is just a little too limited for an RPG in my opinion).  This is an interesting game that is very very indie in style and execution.  The game is both GM-less and dice-less.  It is heavily narrative in play, with the actual roleplaying in it being done via either one person narrating or the group dividing up roles and playing out a scene in total storytelling mode.

As you play the game you are building a world and a timeline and telling stories all along it.  Here is how things basically work.  You start off by deciding on a theme for the game (We decided to do:  Magic re-enters the world as mankind leaves it).  The next step is to decide on the beginning and ending of the timeline you are going to explore with the game (We started with Magic reappears as the Mayan calendar ends, and the end was Mankind joins the Galactic Republic).  Then you define a "palette" for the game, which is a list of stuff that definitely will be allowed in and stuff that will definitely NOT be allowed (I won't list all the stuff we came up with here, but we did stuff like Yes to Orcs and Gods, and No to Elves and Steampunk).  The final part of the "setup" portion of the game has everyone going around the table adding in new "periods" (defining large periods of time) and "events" (specific events within a given period).  There was some sort of system for how many of these you do before you dive in to the play portion, but I can not remember what it was.

At this point you have a bit of a framework put together and you dive into the action.  One person starts as the active player and chooses a focus.  The focus will define and shape the current go around the table and all the stuff that gets added.  For instance in ours we had a period where Mankind meets alien-kind.  John was the first active player so he chose to focus on First Contact initially.  Therefore all of the stuff that the rest of us added had to deal with that subject either directly or tangentially.  We could add periods, events, or a new thing called "scenes", which are exactly what they sound like and are were the actual roleplaying takes place, as long as they dealt with the focus.  You go around the table with each person adding an element and then once it comes back to the active player, who has one more chance to add something, the active player title will pass to the next person and the pick a new focus.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Oh, something I just remembered is that the active player can add two elements as long as they are nested, i.e. a period and an event, or an event and a scene.

To be even more scatterbrained I should point out that when you are adding periods and events to the timeline you also will be defining an overall tone for them, either bright or dark.  Might have mentioned that earlier.  For scenes you do this as well, but there are also some more steps beyond just writing out a description and picking the tone.  You start by asking a question that you want to answer via the roleplay of the scene.  Then you set the scene, where are you at and are there any limits.  Next up each person chooses a character to play, starting with the player to the right of the person who defined the scene.  Then just dive right in, play the characters, enjoy the scene, and explore the question until it is answered.  As soon as it is you stop and move on.

That seems to be pretty much it.  There are probably some more elements to the whole thing, but that is all we encountered as we played.  You keep choosing new foci and adding periods, events, and scenes until you feel that you've explored the setting and the game enough.  There is no chronological order enforced, you can jump back and forth in the timeline.  There are no limits on how many elements you can add under a given higher tier, you can explore a single period for the whole game and neglect the rest if that is what you find interesting.

Overall I found the whole thing to be very interesting and extremely enjoyable.  I had a little bit of my usual problems that I always have in narrative games, in that I take a bit to get comfortable just jumping into character and roleplaying off the cuff, but I got over it.  That is entirely a personal issue and is in now way a problem with the game.  I absolutely LOVED the setting we came up with and will more than likely either run some future games in it or right some stories or both.  I'll give a full summary of it down below.  Everything was easy to comprehend and to execute.  The game flowed well, with only a minor hang up here and there caused by someone having a little trouble thinking up an idea.  I don't know if there is an ability to pass when you are having a brain fart, but that might be a nice house rule.

For the most part, whatever you say goes.  This seems kinda scary, and rife with chance for people to cock things up and "ruin" the game for you.  But I think the game can handle people's diverse visions and creative decisions quite well.  Also, this can easily be overcome by playing with good folks and not sabotaging bastards.  LOL.  There was some sort of system for pushing back against something that you do not like or agree with, but it was rather specific in execution, and I do not at all remember the details because it never came up with us.

I found some great links to other reviews and the like, including one talking about doing the game solo.  I think that would be a really interesting way to guide yourself in worldbuilding.  Here they are:

Review on RPG.net

Blogger's review

Solo review

Here is all the information that I recorded in the word file, which is basically all the stuff that was written out on index cards and introduced to the game as we played.  Later when I have some more time I might type up details of the scenes, we'll see.

Overall Theme:  Magic re-enters the world as mankind leaves it

Yes List:

Orcs

Insectoid Demons

Mecha

Deities

Psionics

Bionics

Aliens

No List:

Elves

Steampunk

Good Magic

Hyperspace

Bookend 1:

Era:  Magic reappears as the Mayan calander ends (dark)

- Event:  A portion of humanity mutates into orks (dark)

- Event:  The first Mage Lord comes to power (dark)

- Event:  A tenth of the world population wiped out due to magic fallout (dark)

- Event:  The first trans-planet gateway is opened to Pluto (bright)

- Event:  Humans discovers the ruins of a spacecraft on the other side of the gate (bright)

Era:  The Reign of the Incarnate Ones (dark)

- Event:  The first human harnesses magic in order to ascend to godhood (bright)

Era:  Mankind meets alien kind (bright)

- Event:  The human ship Hermes discovers a damaged alien trader (dark)

- - Scene:  Why does the Captain of the Hermes fire on the alien trader? (dark)  (Set on Bridge of the Hermes) Resolution:  Captain believes that increased energy readings indicate imminent attack by the 

trader.

- - - Scene details:  Navigator, ship's Oracle, ork security officer, and communications psychic.

- Event:  News of an alien race makes it to Zeus, the leader of the incarnate ones (dark)

- - Scene:  How do the other incarnates convince Zeus to let his humans join the Republic? (bright)  (Set on the planet Olympus)  Resolution:  Ra convinces Zeus to go along with the tides of destiny and 

control it.

- - - Scene details:  Hoplite Mecha on planet (insert name) rebelling in light of discovery of beings not governed by the gods.  Ra and Hades convincing Zeus to allow humans to join with the aliens

Era:  The War of Talaran Aggression (dark) 

- Event:  Talaran strike fleet wipes out human colony in revenge (dark)

- - Scene:  Does the Olympus escape the Talaran fleet or stay to defend the colony  (Set on sensor station, Olympus ship, colony, planetary government)  Resolution:  Olympus & its fighters sacrifice 

themselves to allow some people to evacuate (bright)

- - - Scene details:  CAG of the Olympus Commander Tobias Gemini, sensor station Oracle Damalis, planetary governor , ground control Plebb Johnson

- Event:  The Oracles are wiped out by an alien virus (dark)

- Event:  Hades is killed in the invasion of Tartarus (bright)

- Event:  Aztec gods, led by Tezcatlipoca, offer their power to the Talarans in a planet-wide sacrifice (dark)

- Event:  Aliens show humans how to kill gods (bright)

Bookend 2:

Era:  Mankind joins the Galactic Republic (bright)

Focus 1:  First Contact

Focus 2:  Magic Reappears

Focus 3:  The War of Talaran Aggression

Sentinels of the Multiverse

I am currently in a card game obsession phase.  Absolutely in love with a lot of well designed card games.  My two current favorites are Netrunner and Sentinels of the Multiverse.  Of the two I feel there is a small preference for Sentinels because of the fact that it can be played with more than two-players, and it is even more fun and engaging with the increased player count.  So lets dive in and examine this absolutely wonderful game, the greatest cooperative, fixed deck, comic book themed game in the multiverse.

The game takes place in a series of turns, each one has three distinct components:  The Villain Turn, the Hero Turns, and the Environment Turn.  Each of these distinct types of turns can be further broken down in a few stages.  Each one has a specific "Start of.." and "End of.." turn phase, that really only matters for triggering various effects and abilities.  The Villain Turn also involves drawing and playing a card from the Villain deck.  You will also most likely be dealing with Villain specific powers that relate to either the beginning or end of the Villain Turn.  This type of triggered ability seems to be common across all the Villains in one form or another.

After you've resolved the Villain Turn you then proceed to the Hero Turns.  These also each have the "Start" and "End" phases, as well as the following in order sequence:  Play a Card, Use a Power, Draw a Card.  This can be a simple and straight forward sequence of events, or a complex interplay of abilities and triggers depending on the hero.

The third turn, the Environment Turn, is quite similar to the Villain Turn.  You trigger and "Start" and abilities, then draw and play an Environment card, then trigger any "End" abilities.  After that you head back to the beginning and do it all over again.  This repeats until you've either lost, by all the heroes being incapacitated, or you've won, by reducing the villain's hit points to 0 or less.  The basic rules and framework of the whole thing are quite simple and elegant.  All the complexity comes from the variety of cards and abilities associated with each of the heroes, villains, and environments.

The variety of all of these different decks is perhaps my favorite element of this game.  When you count the expansions and the couple of promo decks you have 15 heroes, 13 villains, and 8 environments.  While all of them operate similarly enough to not require any extra learning curve when switching between them; they also all feel very distinct and flavorful.  You have heroes that are just plain damage dealers, heroes that build up to complicated combos, and heroes that help other heroes shine.  You have villains ranging from criminal masterminds with armies of underbosses and thugs, to deadly mercenaries with impressive arsenals of devices and weapons.  The environments range from the Ruins of Atlantis to a Mars Base.  Each one is fun and interesting in its own right, which is quite impressive.

So far I have played in I believe 6 games of Sentinels, with two of those being solo play throughs to just test out new decks.  The game does not have formal single player rules, so I was basically playing the roles of two actual players, but it was still somewhat enjoyable.  The game really shines in the teamwork and interaction with other players though.  You really feel like a band of valiant superheroes, all working together to take on the big and bad evil villains that threaten the peace and safety of the world.  The game definitely gets easier with more players, and the more the merrier is always true in the majority of board games IMO.  But I can still see it being fun with 2 or 3.

Now let me see if I can remember the participants in each of the games I've played in.

Game 1:  Me, John, Emily, and Armaghn.  We faced the "easy" villain Baron Blade, a sort of mad scientist type.  The heroes that we fielded were the Wraith (kind of a female Batman), Ra (Egyptian themed fire god),  Expatriate (chick with lots of guns), and Fanatic (holy/angel themed hero).  We won, but it was kinda tough.

Game 2:  Same players.  The bad guy this time was Akash'Bhuta (or Osh-Kosh Bagosh as we nicknamed him), a giant tree creature.  Wraith and Ra were played again, but this time they were joined by Nightmist (spellcasting supernatural private eye chick) and Legacy (kind of a Superman type).  We won again, this time a little easier.

Game 3:  Me, John, Emily, Armaghn, and Gabe.  We faced Grand Warlord Voss (Thanos/Darkseid type).  We had Bunker (Iron Man-esque), Ardent Adept (hippie bard music powered type), Ra, Tachyon (combo between the Flash's powers and Reed Richards intellect), and Unity (Gadgeteer chick).  Another tough battle but we won.

Game 4:  Just me.  I faced off against the Deadpool-like Ambuscade.  I used Haka (maori warrior brute type) and Mr. Fixer (Luke Cage/Ninja).  I barely won, and I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have, I probably forgot to do quite a few things by not paying attention.

Game 5:  Me again.  I faced off against the giant evil robot Omnitron.  I had Absolute Zero (kinda a tech using Iceman) and Tempest (Storm-like powers in an alien form).  Stopped at about halfway through in order to start up a game with actual other people, but it wasn't looking great for me.

Game 6:  Me, Emily, Armaghn, and Ron.  We had to face the infectious Plague Rat.  We fielded Haka, Legacy, Visionary (psychic hero), and Mr. Fixer.  We won pretty handily.

As you can see, I'm not the only one who really enjoyed playing and was willing to do so multiple times.  I'm definitely looking forward to more games, and I really think I could do an interesting spin off or two using similar ideas.

Mistborn RPG

Two Sundays ago me and my Siloam RPG group did a character creation session for the Mistborn Adventure Game RPG.  We are going to playing in our first session on this upcoming Sunday.  I have to say that I enjoyed the character creation quite a bit, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the system and the story play.

The Mistborn RPG has one huge advantage in its corner, and that is the author of the novels it is based on, Brandon Sanderson.  For one thing, he is a very gifted storyteller and world builder who has created an interesting setting that is just filled with opportunities for making your own characters and stories.  The whole of Scadrial is very thematic and flavorful.  He is also a genius when it comes to creating and quantifying magic systems in his worlds, and this has translated into a very unique and dynamic system that makes for some great game mechanics.

The game also benefits from the fact that the creators were more interested in making a narrative and rules light system instead of a heavily simulationist one.  As I have said above, the first play session is still. upcoming, but from a brief read through of the rules it looks like there is just enough crunch there to do what you need to, but that the rules stay out of the way of the story nicely.

The only real concern I have is that there is at least one incident of, shall we say wanting to "have you cake and eat it too".  There is an element to a character in this game called Standings.  The issue I have with them is that you both roll them as die pools to achieve things, and also apparently spend points off of them, lowering your die pools, to achieve other things.  Its the whole dilemma of possibly running into a situation of "In order to succeed I have get worse at doing this thing in the future", which just feels weird to me.

The character creation system was interactive and cool.  I had quite a bit of fun doing it.  The first step is to decide what you Crew is like.  The "party" in this game is called a Crew, and you as a group must come up with the reasons that they are together, what they have in common, and what they want to achieve.  To do so you answer three questions.  What is your common cause?  Who is your primary target?  What is your preferred method?  For our Crew we decided that our cause was bringing hope and a better world, that our primary target was the Steel Ministry (the oppressive police force/zealous church that enforces the will of the totalitarian government), and our primary method would be theft.

Step 2 is deciding on a concept for your individual character.  This is a short phrase that defines who you basically are.  Mine was Terrisman Con-artist (the Terris are a subjugated people who work primarily as highly trained servants and who secretly keep alive a distinctive racial magical art called Feruchemy).  We also had some idealistic nobles, a disgraced Kandra (shapeshifter race)and an ambitious Skaa (peasant) to round out the group.  The next step was to answer a series of 10 important questions.

The following questions give you various traits that both define your character and help you out:
1) Why did you join the crew?
2) How did you live before you joined the crew?
3) What special skill do you bring to the crew?
4) What is your most distinctive feature?
5) How do other people describe your personality?

The next three have to be answered with the following three answers:  Strong, Average, Weak.  You can only assign one answer to each question and must use all three answers.  These define your various attributes and abilities:
6) Do you have any special powers (like magic or shapeshifting)?
7) Are you especially fit, smart, or charistmatic?
8) Are you well-off or do you struggle to get by?

Then you get a tragedy:
9) What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?

And a Destiny:
10) What do you believe if your ultimate purpose?

The next step is mostly bookkeeping stuff.  You go through and assign different sized pools of points to your Powers, Attributes, and Standing; the pools depending on what answers you gave the corresponding questions in question 6-8.  Then you fill in the details.  You pick your race, though many of the character types with specific powers are limited to certain races (like my guy had Feruchemy so he had to be Terris).  Next is a name, then setting your damage tracks, and choosing equipment.  Then you are done and ready to play.

Like I said my guy is a Terrisman Con-artist.  He is the leader of our Crew and is meant to be a smart, charming, calculating mastermind type character.  He is heavily based off the Nate character on the show Leverage if you have seen that.  He joined the crew to try and defeat the Steel Ministry, because he sees them as a primary force for oppression and terribleness in the world.  His job before joining up was a Steward, or highly trained servant, to a noble house.  His special skill is the ability to always have a plan.

His most distinctive feature is an aura of companion-ability (not a word I know), which is to say that he just makes people want to be around him and be his friend.  Other people apparently see him as inspiring (at least I think that is what the group decided on.  He is a Feruchemist, so he has Strong powers.  I wanted him to have a high Charm and Wit, so he has Average attributes, and his Standings are Weak, but that kinda fits a servant.  His Tragedy was that his previous three crews had been caught and killed by the Steel Ministry, and his ultimate purpose (in his mind at least) is to show the people that don't have to fear and worship the Steel Ministry and its evil Inquisitors.

Feruchemy is a magic system that allows a practitioner of it to store certain qualities in special metal objects that he wears or carries, and then call upon those qualities with great speed and in typically vast amounts at a later time.  The downside if that you become deficient in those qualities while storing.  For instance you could store up vision in a Tinmind.  While you are doing it you become practically blind, but when you later use the stored vision you could spot the hair on a mouse's tail from a mile away.  Each of the different types of metal available in the system lets you store up a different type of quality.  I'm looking forward to the interesting challenge of creatively using and husbanding the limited resources of these stored qualities to best effect.

The resolution system in the game is fairly straight forward.  You build a pool based on some sort of stat that is relevant to the task, modified possibly by traits, equipment, and circumstances.  Then you roll a number of d6s equal to the pool size and your looking for pairs of the same number.  If you can get a pair of a number that equals or beats the Difficulty Score, which will always be between one and five, then you succeed.  Rolling 6s give you extra little bonuses if you succeed.  There are the typical three stages of complexity when it comes to rolls as well.  Player vs a set difficulty, Player vs. an opponent in a single roll, and Player vs. an opponent in a series of connected rolls.  These are called Challenges, Contests, and Conflicts respectively.

Character Advancement is another area where I see some possibility for concern.  I like the non-level based advancement.  You earn XP tics and then spend those to increase skills and abilities, which is a style of system I like.  The problem comes in when you look at what earns you those tics.  Most of the things are either going to be once in a blue moon, or are the vague, nebulous story based criteria that are sometimes so dang hard to define and to know when you've really earned them.  Passing these out at a good pace is going to take some getting used to, and would benefit form a confident GM; and unfortunately our GM, while most likely the best person to run a game in this world, is probably not going to be super confident in her abilities.  But the characters luckily start out at a pretty good power level, so even if advancement is slow, things should be mostly fine.

I'm really looking forward to playing the game.  I have a good feeling that this may turn out being a wonderful mix of the Matrix, Ocean's Eleven, the Chronicles of Riddick, and Lord of the Rings.  Which is an amazing combination in my opinion.

Risk Legacy

Today we played our second game of Risk Legacy.  I did not win this time around, so it was a terrible game :)

If you haven't heard about Risk Legacy, it is a very interesting and unique game for quite a decent price.  I heavily advise looking into it if you're a fan of Risk, or even if you are not such a big fan.  It plays quite differently than the old school game that it shares a name with.

The basic overall structure of the game is the same as the old one.  You have a map of the world, divided up into continents and countries.  You march your little plastic men across the world, killing enemies and capturing territories in order to bring about your victory.  You still get new troops each turn based on the number of countries you hold, still roll 3 dice to attack and 2 to defend, still get one free move for reinforcements, and still get a card for capturing an enemy held country.

The details are where the differences start to appear.  First, the biggest difference and my favorite one is the play time.  This version plays in about 45-60 minutes, as opposed to the 4-5 hours of normal Risk.  How does it accomplish this amazing feat?  Well victory is no longer about world domination, it is about gaining four Red Stars (victory points).  To make things even faster and easier everyone starts with a capitol HQ, which counts as one Red Star, and if you haven't won a game yet you get a bonus Red Star token, so you are halfway to victory.  This makes for very quick games once you realize it.  Heck all you have to do is capture one other player's HQ and then turn in 4 cards for an additional Red Star token and you've won.

Another thing that really makes this Risk version unique, and that I also really like, is that the game is constantly being changed and customized to your group as you play it over the course of the 15 game campaign that it is intended to be played for.  You end up making changes to and adding lots of cool stuff to the map, the cards, the rules, and the game itself.  Both as a reward at the end of each game and as a result of various conditions and triggers being met you will do things like add custom named cities to the board, increase the value of various territory cards, name continents, change the continent bonuses up or down, fortify cities, add powers to the various factions, and even change the basic rules of the game.  By the end of 15 games you will have a very unique and highly customized Risk game that has been shaped and formed by the creative minds and hard efforts of your gaming group.  A gaming artifact of extraordinary personal value.

Of course a certain type of gamer will not be able to accept the coolness of this unique feature of Risk Legacy.  Those who hold the physical components of their games to be sacred and inviolate have shown themselves to be utterly aghast at the concept of such travesties as WRITING ON THE BOARD or TEARING UP CARDS.  The horror!  Why even the owner of our copy is unwilling to actual destroy any portion of the game, even when it instructs us to do so.  We will just be setting aside anything that should be "destroyed".  Which is totally fine by me.  I don't really feel that there will be much to gained from physically destroying game pieces.  Doing things like naming cities and continents, and recording your name on the victory track are enough for me.  I founded the city of Asgard in Scandinavia first game, and the city of Spiel-ville in Northern Europe the second game.

There are a plethora of other minor things that make this game different from classic Risk.  Each player plays a faction with specific plastic minis and special powers (well only one power right now, but there will be more later).  If you've won a game and don't get a bonus Red Star token any more, you get a missle token that you can use to change a die in any combat to a 6.  There are things called Scars that can make certain territories harder or easier to defend.  You only start with one country at the beginning of the game, so there is lots of expanding into empty territories at the beginning of the game.  And more interesting changes should be coming up as we open some of the various boxes and envelopes in the box.  Like if either John or I win the next time then we will open the envelope that says "Open when someone signs the board for a second time."

I have to say I'm really a big fan of this game so far, and I think my opinion will only go up as more facets of it are revealed.  I love the super fast play time, I love the customizing, and I love the cool theme and flavor of it.  It still has the same failing of any Risk game to some degree, in that victory can largely be determined by being the first one to trade in a good set of cards for a large chunk of troops.  But that is not going to be the only way that people win.  John won this one by saving his cards and trading in for that fourth Red Star token.  I think the game will promote people playing harder and taking more risks, since games can go from a stalemate to a victory so quickly, easily in a single turn.

Last Night on Earth Review

Last Night on Earth.  What a roller coaster ride playing that game was.

First of an explanation of how this game works.  In it you are on one of two teams, humans (or as I like to call them Breathers) or zombies.  You play through some sort of scenario/mission which usually has the humans trying to accomplish a specific goal, like gather 12 supplies which was the goal in our game, and the zombies are pretty much looking to eat all those tasty, tasty brains.

The game is played in alternating turns for each team.  On the Zombie turn the hordes of mindless undead are represented by one or two players (or in our game 3).  All of the zombie players do each of the steps in the turn together.  First you move the Sun Track Marker, which counts down the rounds in the game until the sun rises and either the humans celebrate surviving or the zombies show up in force and swarm the remaining humans; just depends on the scenario.

Then you each draw until you have 2 zombie cards, which give you nice advantages like more zombies, more movement, better attacks, etc.  You then roll to see if new zombies spawn.  Roll 2d6 and if you roll more than the number of zombie on the board you get more this turn.  In our scenario however we skipped this step because zombies automatically spawned each turn.

Next, move the shambling hordes towards their delicious targets.  Most of the time the zombies move one space, though cards can improve that.  After movement if any zombies are in the same space as some humans they get to chow down.  Combat involves rolling one or more d6s versus the humans two or more d6s.  The person who rolls the highest number wins, zombies win ties.  If the human gets a higher number but no doubles the zombies is Fended Off, basically the fight ends with no one taking any damage.  If he wins and gets doubles he kills the zombie.  If the zombie wins he does one damage to the human.

Finally you roll a d3 to see how many new zombies you spawn if you do get to spawn new ones.  Add new zombies in at the various designated spawn points on the map, distributing them as evenly as possible.  You also have an option of trading in two possible new zombies in order to draw a Grave Weapon card.  These add interesting weapons to the zombies that give them cool and usually powerful advantages.

After that the silly breathers get their pointless turns in an attempt to deny zombies their rightful dinner.  Each of the human players is playing a Hero character.  Each Hero takes their turn in sequence, each one finishing their whole turn before the next goes.  First up there is a Move Action.  You roll a d6 and can move that many spaces.  Alternatively after rolling you can decide to Search an area for useful stuff.  Next up is Exchange Items.  All heroes in the space with the active hero can both give and receive items via the Hero whose turn it is.

After that you break out the guns and do Ranged Attacks.  You get one shot a turn and the card gives you the details on what your roll means.  Next you Fight Zombies, using the same combat method detailed above, and then the next person does all that for their turn.

Okay so lets look at what I thought about the game.  To start I have to say that we played a game with 8 players, and the game is meant to only have 6 players.  We had an extra human and an extra zombie player.  Since this was my first and only game of LNoE I can't speak with authority on the game speed, but it really seemed to move slower than it probably should.  Other players were saying that it was not normally this slow.  It was really bad in this particular game though.  There was a TON of downtime and the game took so long that people were yelling for it to end during the last hour.

Other than that the game seemed okay.  I played on the zombie side, so I can't really say what the human play was like.  I have to say that the zombies were fun from a thematic point of view, but in general there was not much there.  I really feel that they could just be automated by the game system and you could just have human players.  Yes, it was fun to be the zombies and try to eat brains, but I don't think that that side of gameplay would hold up for multiple plays.  There just really wasn't enough there.

The various Heroes that were available to play all looked fun and cool, and gameplay for the human side seemed like it would take a good amount of thinking, planning, and tactics.  I'd give that side a try for sure.  In the end this isn't going to become my favorite game of all time or anything.  But I will definitely give it another chance, and I think it will be improved by trying out the human side, playing when I haven't been awake for over 26 hours, and possibly imbibing some alcohol while playing.  That always helps.

Freedom Sunday XVIII (July 15, 2012)

Had a good time playing board games yesterday up at Bear's by the Maul.  Managed get in three rounds of gaming before my exhaustion kicked in and I had to head home and get some sleep.

First off me and a couple other folks got to play a couple of rounds of a new game called D-Day Dice.  I found it to be an interesting, but apparently rather difficult game.  We were playing without actually having the rules on hand though, so we may have been doing it all wrong.  I blame John.

The game works very like Roll Through the Ages if you are familiar with that one.  You roll a handful of custom dice and you are looking to build pools of resources by getting the die face results that give them to you.  The dice can yield Troops, Courage, Stars, Tools, or Skulls.  You have six dice to start and have to lock two down immediately after your first roll; but then you get two more rolls to try and manipulate the other four dice into the combinations you want.  The dice are red, white, and blue; two of each color.  If you get the same type of die face on each of the three colors you can get some nice bonuses out of that, or if you get a "straight" of one of each die face you can also get another reward.

You are building up these resources in order to try and accomplish a thematic World War II combat mission.  The one we tried to do was the landing on and taking of Omaha Beach.  The method for accomplishing the mission was to basically move up the beach, through various zones to the bunker, and then take out the bunker.  This is made challenging by various elements.  There are minefields and zones in the path of machine gun fire.  There are some zones that require certain Specialists (that you recruit with the Stars you roll) in order to go into and pass through them.  Also, every zone has a troop cost that you have to pay each turn you spend in that zone, and the cost rises quickly the further up the beach you get.  Making everything worse is the fact that you can only stay in a given zone three turns max, and some of them even less.

The various resources help you overcome these obstacles.  Troops gives you warm bodies to soak up the various forms of damage and attrition that come flying at you.  Tools give you a currency to buy various items that give you bonuses and reduce penalties.  Courage is spent to be able to move over zone thresholds as you go further up the beach.  As stated above Stars let you buy specialists that give you some cool abilities.  Skulls are just evil, the cancel out one other die that you have rolled; unless you can get lucky and get the one of each color trio.

It was a very quick playing game, we went through the scenario twice in a short amount of time.  The speed was helped out by the fact that John is apparently terrible at the game ;).  We died before we got past the second set of zones on the beach both times.  It feels like one of those games that will be very difficult and just require sheer perfect luck until you figure out the best combinations and strategies; and then it will be fun and challenging, but doable.  I look forward to playing some more, this time with actual rules.

This was followed up by a game of Core Worlds, a deck building game of space conquest.  The game has a really cool theme in my opinion, each of the players plays a periphery bandit/barbarian kingdom that is fighting its way towards the center of the old and waning Galactic Realm; trying to reach and take the core worlds.  Mechanically the game reminds me a lot of both Barbarossa and Eminent Domain; because of the combination of deck building and combat, but if you know about Dominion, you'll at least know the basics.  Your aim is to get the most Empire Points, you do this by adding cards to your deck, and then using the cards you draw each turn to conquer worlds and gain resources; which you then use to do the same thing on bigger and bigger scales.

The game has ten turns and each turn has five phases.  First you draw cards.  Then you build up energy.  Energy is your main resource for the game, it is how you buy cards into your deck, play cards onto the table, and activate special abilities on some cards.  Each of your planets generates a set amount listed on the card, so the more you conquer the greater your energy production.  You also have a couple of Energy Surge cards that you can spend when you have them to get some more energy.  These cards normally give you +1 but you can get +2 if anyone else at the table produces more energy than you from their planets, which is a nice little catch the leader mechanic.  You also have the ability to discard two cards to get +1 energy.  In the two games I have played we have been allowing people to do that last bit as many times at they want.  After the last game I was looking at the rules and realized you can only do it once.  Oops.  The interesting thing with energy generation is that you are doing it before you get to see what cards are available to purchase/conquer this turn.  So you have to make decisions about whether to keep more troops or to discard a couple for more buying power, stuff like that.

Next you deal out the cards that are available for this turn.  As you progress through the game you will draw from a new deck for these cards every other turn, so you are constantly introducing newer and cooler cards; which is nice.  Also cards only stay on the table for two turns max.  If they aren't taken the first turn they are out they get a +1 energy token as an incentive on the next turn, and then the turn after that they are discarded.  You draw up to a certain number of cards based on the number of players, and if necessary you keep drawing until you have both planets and non planet cards equal to the number of players.  This makes sure everyone at least has some chance of getting stuff they want.

Then you start going around the table and spending actions and energy to accomplish stuff.  You'll be conquering planets, deploying troops and starships, and drafting (buying) new cards out of the middle into your deck.  You can conquer or buy only once each time if comes around to you; but you can deploy as many units as you want each time as long as you have the resources to do so.  Conquering planets requires some combination of Fleet and Ground strength.  You basically declare you are attacking a given planet, then discard cards from your warzone (the area on the table where you have played down units) that have Fleet and Ground strength equal to or greater than the defense strengths of the planet.  Then you take it and put it on your warzone, hurrah a new planet has joined your growing empire.  After everyone has used up all their actions/energy or passed there is a quick cleanup and discard phase and then a new turn begins.

Overall I like the game.  I'm a fan of deck building and I love sci-fi and spaceships type themes.  The thing I didn't like about the two-player game was that there felt like there were a ton of cards that I was never going to see or use because of how few cards were drawn each turn; but that was fixed in the larger game.  The rising costs to buy and conquer things can be a bit unforgiving if you don't manage to keep up with the momentum; but I don't think that it is in any way impossible to catch up, just sometimes difficult.  There is definitely plenty of room in various places for analysis paralysis, and you need to go in turn order at those specific places since you are all competing for a common pool of resources.

The five player game took quite a while, but I think the time would be cut in half once everyone knew the game and knew what they were doing.  I went into the five player game with a distinct strategy, get robots and vehicles and then get the world at the end that gave bonuses for robots and vehicles.  I accomplished this, and won by one point, but I felt like I didn't do it as well as I could, and that dumb luck had its fair share of my accomplishment.  Looking forward to getting more plays in and seeing if I can get better at it.

Finally we played a four player game of Last Will.  I've reviewed that already over here, so not going into much detail on it.  I played a terrible game, making stupid choices and having a lot of incidents of "What the crap am I doing being this stupid?".  Despite my own advice against properties, I decided to give them a try, and failed horribly at using them.  I was doing things a turn or two before I should have, or picking sub-optimal choices all over the place.  In my defense I had been up for about 20-21 hours straight at that time.  But I still enjoyed the game, and tried to make clear that my anger was only at myself not at anyone else or the game.  Anders played a really good game and totally kicked my butt, and he deserved to do so.

Looking forward to next week.  I think I saw an expansion to Tanto Cuore there, and if I did then I ABSOLUTELY want to play that soon.  I <3 that game.

Remember Tomorrow Review Part 2

In the vein of trying to get more updates out, here is a quick second look at Remember Tomorrow with my opinions after having played a second time.

We played a second session of the game last Monday.  Josh was unable to make it because of some sort of pandemic that was localized to his house.  Therefore it was just me, John, and Emily.  Luckily Josh's character had achieved his goal and been written out at the end of the last session; so it all worked out.

The session ended up being fairly short.  I wrote myself out pretty quickly and managed to get my character's mind transferred into an android body.  John also wrote his character out after a few more scenes and ended the session with a cool scene where his character found his long lost brother.  Emily I believe did not get very close to achieving her goal; but she most likely would have very quickly in a third session; or if that session had gone one a few more scenes.

After I wrote my character out I made a new character that was basically a crazy loose cannon that was aimed directly at the other two characters.  I did not get to play him for very long; I think only 2 or 3 scenes. But in the short time I had I think I managed to really GET how this game can be done correctly.  It is very much as I and John said in the last post; a game where you are playing a GM first and mostly just reacting as a PC.  Coming into it with that mindset totally made things click and my opinion on the game pretty much did a 180.

I really think that the game could heavily benefit from instructions or at least a heavy suggestion that when you make your initial characters you should be looking to create interesting points of antagonism with the other PCs.  At the very least you should have to make your Faction be set up to go against and interact with someone else's character; and not make it be about your own.  I think that that would really help you come to the first play session with a correct mindset and a better setup for making the game work the way it was intended to work.

Overall when I look at the game and the play experience with a more objective point of view; I think it was really fun and a very well designed game.  The problems I had the first time around where with me; not really with the game itself.  There are some really cool ideas that I may be stealing or modifying for my own projects in the future, and I think I would enjoy doing another round of it at a Game Day or something.  So I'd say definitely give it a shot if you get the opportunity, it is worth your time and effort.

Remember Tomorrow Review Part 1

Last Will Board Game Review

A few Sundays ago I played a board game called Last Will. Here is an excerpt from BGG that explains the theme of the game:

“In his last will, your rich uncle stated that all of his millions will go to the nephew who can enjoy money the most. How to find out which nephew should be rich? You will each be given a large amount of money and whoever can spend it first will be the rightful heir. Visit the most exclusive theaters or eat in the most expensive restaurants. Buy old properties for the price of new ones and sell them as ruins. Host a huge party in your mansion or on your private boat. Spend like your life would depend on it. Spend to become rich! If you're the first to run through the money on hand, you'll receive the rest of his inheritance – oh, and win the game.”

Sounds fun doesn't it? I sure found it to be quite well designed and a lot of fun.

For starters the art in the game is very well done and a theme that I particularly enjoy. I'd call it Victorian or Dickensian I guess. You know top hats and corsets, gaslights and horse drawn carriages. There are quite a few cards in this game and pretty much every one of them has something nice to look at on it.

The board exhibits good graphic design, with an appealing look, nice, easy to understand layout, and plenty of space for what is there. The individual player boards are nicely arranged as well, and heck there are even little wooden top hat meeples!

The game rules were, in my opinion, fairly easy to learn and understand, and the strategies seem both deep and varied. This is obviously a very good thing.

The game is played out until the end of seven turns or someone spends all their money, whichever happens first. If no one wins before the end of seven rounds, then the winner is the player with the least money and property values. If someone goes bankrupt on a previous round, then you play out that round and whoever is furthest in debt by the end of the round wins.

A turn takes place in five distinct phases. The first phase is setup, and is nice and quick. Basically fill the 8 card slots on the main game board with the designated type of card; and there are icons on the board to tell you which type goes where.

Next up is planning. There are eight different planning options on the board in a 4 player game, I think there are less with less players. Each option has four components to it: Card Draws, Errand Boys, Actions, and Turn Order. Each plan has different combinations of the first three, i.e. Four card draws, one errand boy, and two actions. The turn order portion is determined by how far to the left in the line up of planning spaces you place your token. The plans to the left go before the plans to the right; but the plans to the right have the advantage of getting you more stuff. You pick a plan and place your token on it, and then immediately draw the designated number of cards from any of the four main card decks (more on them later).

After that you, in turn order as determined by the planning track placement, place your Errand Boy tokens (the awesome little wooden top hats). You will have either one or two errand boys on a given turn, and each player takes turns placing one at a time until everyone has placed all of theirs. You have a good selection of options for what to do with them. First, the biggest variety of options are the various face up cards that you dealt onto the board during setup. You can place an errand boy on one of them to immediately take it into your hand. These cards range from being exactly the same type of cards you get from draws, to special more powerful version that you can only get this way, or even wild cards. There is one spot for getting an expansion to your player board. Your player board starts with five slots for cards, and this allows you to add more slots. Each player has a color coded space that allows them to just draw a card from a deck. There is the real estate market, where you can go manipulate the price modifiers for the four different types of buildings. And one person, if they don't really want to do anything else, can just go to the opera and spend $2.

The next phase is the Action Phase. Remember back when you got actions from your chosen plan? Here is where you spend them. You can play cards from your hand or activate cards that are already on your player board. Most cards will take at least one action to perform, and many will have an option to spend more actions to get more benefits out of the card play. Each card will explain what type of actions are needed and what you get from spending them on the card itself. This phase looks fairly straight forward, but the majority of the strategy and planning is in this phase. The other two are mostly just worker placement. Here you have to plan out the use of the limited resources of Actions and Cards in order to move towards your goal as quickly and efficiently as possible. Lots of interesting approaches can be taken.

Finally you have an End of Round Phase. Here you discard down to two hand cards, depreciate properties (more on that later), reset any activated cards on your player board, clear unclaimed cards from the main board, reclaim figures, move the turn marker, and pass the first player marker to the left.

Now, to understand all the things you can and might want to do during a given turn you need to know about the different types of cards in the game. There are four main types of cards, in four main decks: Events, Companions, Helpers and Expenses, and Properties.

Events are white bordered cards that represent one time expenses and experiences. They will be things like going to the theater, taking a sailing trip, going on a carriage ride, having a fine dinner, etc. Each will take one or more actions to play, and are played directly from your hand. Almost all will result in your being able to spend a certain amount of money. Many of them can be enhanced by either spending more actions to cause the expense to go up, or by attaching companion cards to the event to also make the expense go up. The card will have the details as to what particular companions can come along, and how many actions are necessary to bring them. These cards ended up being a huge portion of my strategy, and one of my favorite ways to spend money.

Helpers, Expenses, and Properties all are black bordered cards. To play them you have to have an open space on your player board. Most will take an action to play down to the board, and can then be activated for further effects later on, usually by spending more actions. Expenses work like events, except they stay in play and can cost you money each turn. Some will just drain money without having to spend actions, and some will require one or more actions to activate. I also really found that I'm a fan of non-action costing Expenses.

Helpers give you cool bonuses and advantages. Some of them also cost you money, which is nice, but even if they don't you will always get something cool; like extra actions, or being able to activate things without spending actions, or giving bonuses on buying or selling properties; stuff like that. The one that gives extra actions is VERY nice.

Properties are one of the main ways that you can get rid of large chunks of money. You're best case scenario is to buy the property at a high price, then sell it again later at a much lower one; losing as much money as possible on the deal. You can affect the prices via the real estate market and by special abilities from cards. Also, as long as you don't pay the maintenance cost on property, most of them will depreciate in value at the end of each turn; further adding to your loses. Which remember is a good thing. The other thing you can do instead of letting the property depreciate, or on the ones that don't depreciate, is to activate the property and pay the maintenance costs. This is another good way to spend money each turn, and you can enhance the amount spent with extra actions and companions, just like with events.

Properties are however a double edged sword. Sure you can lose a good amount of money on them, via depreciation or maintenance, but you also have to sell off all of them before you can declare bankruptcy, go into debt, and win. So if you are getting near the end of the game; you should probably start ditching those properties. Also, because of the short number of turns, you won't get to pay those maintenance costs very many times, or allow is to depreciate naturally for every long if you want to ditch it before the game ends. When I played I was the only one not to have any properties when the game ended (in round six with me winning btw :) ). I think properties CAN be good, you just have to avoid the temptation to hold on to them for too long. And remember, when you sell that property you are probably going to get a decent amount of money back, even if you sell at quite a loss, and you will have to plan for getting rid of that money quickly if you want to win.

The last type of cards are slate (blueish color) bordered, and these are the companions. There are four types: Dog, Horse, Guest, and Chef. There are also a couple of wild cards that can be any of them; and these are available face up on the board, not from drawing. As I've stated in the descriptions of the other cards, these are used to enhance the amount of money you spend on events, expenses, etc.

Technically there is one more deck of cards, the special cards, but they can't be drawn up the way the other ones can. You can only get them by claiming them off the main board with errand boys. These cards will be both white and black bordered; and will tend to be slightly better versions of the same type of cards from those respective decks.

I'll wrap up with my thoughts on the game in general. I've already stated how I loved it aesthetically, and that I found it to be well designed and have deep strategy possibilities. All very good accolades in the games metaphorical cap (or top hat). Properties are a double-edged sword and may or may not be worth it. Events seem to be where it is at, at least in my opinion. I loved that there are lots of different paths to victory that you can take though; and none is really the right way.

I think that you don't have to be too caught up in picking the right plan during the planning phase, both because you can always get something good no matter what order you go in the turn; and because everyone gets to be first player once or twice.

Top hat meeples rock!

Overall this was a great games, that was tons of fun, and I look forward to playing it some more. I will probably buy it at some point in the future, and that is about as strong a recommendation as I can give I guess.

Remember Tomorrow Session 1 Review

Last night me and the MGG played our first session of the new cyberpunk "GM-less" game called Remember Tomorrow.  The game is created by Gregor Hutton, who is a fairly well known indie RPG designer and previously known to me for his really fun space bug killing(like the Starship Troopers movie) RPG called 3:16.  I enjoyed 3:16 when I played it way back at the start of MGG, would actually enjoy playing it again sometime.

As I said Remember Tomorrow is a cyberpunk game.  If that doesn't mean anything to you then think of the movie Blade Runner.  If that doesn't mean anything to you then I'm sorry, your life must suck.  Go watch that movie right now.  Stop reading and go watch it.

Have you corrected that sin against your own humanity?  Good.

Remember Tomorrow is also a "Gm-less" game, as in there is no set gamemaster, everyone gets to play.  That is a little bit of a misnomer in this one, because it really comes across as almost more of a "player-less" game (that observation was made by John, and after considering it I agree) because what you really end up doing with the bulk of your effort in this game is trading off the GM chair.

The basic structure of the game involves going around the table and taking turns framing and narrating scenes.  When your turn comes up you have three options for scene type:  Introduction, Deal, Face Off.  The only time you don't have access to all three options is during the first two rounds of scenes, when each player introduces the PC and the Faction that they created during setup, using, you guessed it, Introduction Scenes.

Character and Faction creation are simple and quick.  They have to be, because you can and will be creating more of each on the fly as you play the game.  You pick or roll randomly for various components of your character, and quickly assemble them all into a short but succinct picture of a PC.  To create a PC you do the following steps:
1.  Pick a Name/Handle (lists are provided and they are in sets of 10 if you just want to roll.)
2.  Roll/Pick an Identity:  You're looking at things like Activist, Dealer, Tech, Hacker, etc.  Purely color and fluff here.
3.  Roll/Pick a Motivation:  Envy, Greed, Freedom, Respect and the like.  No mechanical weight to these, but they do have a large fictional weight.  Your goal and drive in the game will be heavily tied to it.
4.  Gear:  Roll or pick 3 pieces of fun cyberpunk gear, like flying cars, needler guns, artificial limbs, etc.  Once again this is going to be fluff and color.
5.  Parameters Ready/Willing/Able:  These are your "stats" for this game, they describe how Ready, Willing, and Able you are to pursue and accomplish your goal.  They will be rated on a scale of 1-9 and you basically roll d10s and try to get at or under these scores to get successes.  You get 12 points to split between the three, none can start higher than 8 and lower than 2 is probably dangerous.
6.  Conditions:  You get one Positive Condition (Angry, Connected, Prepared, etc) and one Negative (Confused, Dying, Lost, Hunted, etc).  These flavor your RP and end up being a currency that both you and your opponents spend to affect outcomes.
7.  Goal:  Finally pick a goal.  No option to roll randomly for this sadly :)  Look at your Identity, Motivation, Conditions, all that and let it influence your decision when coming up with a goal.

Making a Faction is pretty much the same sort of thing.  You pick a Type(like Identity), Conditions, Motivation, and Influence (like Parameters but just one and starts at 4).

I rolled randomly for pretty much everything I possibly could, except Parameters, Goal, and first name.  I ended up with the following character:

Elias Yamamoto, Activist.  Motivation: Survival, Ready 5, Willing 4, Able 3, PCondition: Angry, NCondition: Dying, Gear: VTOL, Flechette Gun, Knowledge Skillsoft, Goal:  Get my consciousness transferred into a synth body.

And Faction:  Orange Micro, Pharma Corp.  Motivation: Revenge, Influence: 4, PCondition: Enthused, NConditon: Coerced

John created an Arms Dealer named Connor Wu and the Green Dragon Triad faction.  Emily made Vitoria Chen, a VR entertainment cube dealer and the Doki Doki Gang(a professional group of contract killers), and Josh came up with Leonard Spencer, an antiques dealer, and the Kleinen Pharmaceuticals faction.

We all started off in various places across the world, me and Josh somewhere in Europe, Emily and John over in Asia around Hong Kong.  I had a bit of trouble keeping together track of all the details of the four different stories that were all happening at once; so I'm not going to go into much detail as to what happened in the actual play.

Connor Wu spent time trying to track down his estranged brother, while dealing with the Green Dragon Triad trying to pull him back in.  Vitoria Chen was dealing having been financially cuckolded by her ex and trying to get out from under her dad's influence; though the forceful offer from the GD Triad was not the way she wanted to do it.  Leonard Spencer was constantly going out the fire escape to get away from IRS agents, Triad thugs, and the like; while working for Kleinen to acquire some sort of giant Faberge egg that supposedly had a deadly virus sample hidden within it.  Oh and Elias hired the Doki Doki Gang to try and take out the leader of the anti-android Church of One Life, as well as spending time looking for a place with the equipment for the consciousness transfer.

Back to looking at the framework of the game.  As I said before when your turn comes up you are basically stepping into the GM chair to one degree or another, its called being the Controller in game terms.  Your three options if you remember were Introduction, Deal, and Face-Off scenes.  An Introduction scene is exactly what it sounds like, you introduce a new character or faction.

Your first two rounds of scenes will all be these, introducing each players initial PC and Faction.  Then as you play if you want to bring a new PC or Faction into play, just whip one up real quick (nice to have a good stack of blank sheets available for this) and then run an Intro scene for it.  After narrating the intro, you make an unopposed roll (all rolls are 3d10 by default) and then compare the die results to your Parameters or Influence to see how many successes you get.  You then spend the successes 1 for 1 to get various improvements like increasing a Parameter, adding a PCon or removing a NCon.

A Deal scene lets your Held PC make a deal with a Faction.  I just realized I didn't address Held PCs yet.  Basically each player gets to hold on to a single PC as their exclusive character that only they can use, but one can change the PC you have Held with other PCs that are out in the middle if one wants to.  All non-Held PCs are in the middle and usable by anyone.  In a Deal scene you pick 1 Faction in the middle and narrate a scene where you negotiate a deal that advantages both your PC and the Faction.  The Faction gets an automatic +1 Influence bump, and the PC gets an unopposed roll to try and get successes to spend on improvements.

The main meat of the game are going to be Face-Off scenes, at least that is the intention.  In a Face Off scene you pick either your Held PC or one of the common PCs or Factions and then go after someone else's Held PC.  You narrate the scene, and then when you come to a point of conflict you each state a scene goal and make an opposed roll.  The side with the most successes wins and gets their scene goal for free, and then gets to spend their margin of success (difference in successes between the Winner and Loser) on improvements, similar to the other two scenes.  The big difference is that here in a Face Off is the only place you can spend a success to get a Tick or check on one of your Parameters.  Accomplishing your goal requires a Tick on each of your Parameters btw, showing that your totally Ready, Willing, and Able to carry out your goal.  Also, if you lose this roll off, and want to still hamper your opponent, you have the option of removing one of their NCons to reduce their margin of success by one.

The other side of the currency in the game are the PCons, which can be spent before a roll to add an auto-success, or after for a re-roll.

Now I know there has been a lot here, and the post is long already, but I'm going to finish off with a few of my thoughts and impressions about the game so far:

Pros:
- Love the ability to have random character creation
- The wording and language of the game really seems to work well for it and its genre and theme
- It is a tight, clean well designed game
- You feel like your almost always improving your character and driving forward
- Core mechanics are easy to figure out and prepping is a simple process
- Seems to do a good job of handling the disparate stories that end up connecting later style

Cons:
- Not a big fan of the Cross mechanic.  Which I forgot to mention, but its basically if you roll a double or triple on the dice then the next person's scene has to incorporate something from yours.  Its meant to integrate the stories, but it comes across forced and can be annoying
- Keeping track of four different stories, or three other peoples stories while planning my own, was very difficult.  And driving someone else's story via Face-Off scenes is very important, so you HAVE to know what is going on.
- I feel a strong disparity between the natural desire to drive your goal forward, and the place where your power is vested in the mechanics.  Basically you have the ability to drive other's stories forward, but your own mostly has to wait on others to drive it.  This was very hard for me to get totally.
- Standard issue with highly narrative games, if you take full control of a scene things can get a bit masturbatory, but if you hand off control of NPCs the other people may feel self-conscious that they don't know the NPC or know where you want to go, or may just "mess things up" if your view.  Another hard thing for me to deal with.
- It can be hard to frame scenes in other's stories without stopping game flow for a meta-explanation of where they see their story going, and what they are doing with it so far.

Overall you have to really pay attention to the other stories, get invested in the other characters, be thinking of what you can do to drive their story home; and pretty much just be reactive with your own story and character.  All of that is very counter intuitive to me.  It definitely feels more like what one would be doing in the GM chair instead of the player chair, and getting into that mind set was a bit beyond me for the first session.  But I really like the design and aesthetic here, and we will be playing again next week.  So hopefully I can grok it this time and come at it with a better attitude and understanding.

Remember Tomorrow Review Part 2