Hi, again.
First of all, sorry for my English. I must confess I needed the help of Google translator and Wordreference to translate this long text from Spanish.
Step by step advance our first campaign with WiP. Yesterday we played the second session and although many things happened, we felt the time ran very fast.
The cast is formed by four heroes:
-A sprinter who can reach the speed of light
-A girl who can resize his body at will
-A powerful master of the four elements
-A lord of the arcane and mentalist (my character)
I can’t tell much about the story because I’m not the EIC, but I can do about the sensations this game system is giving to us.
In the first session, the characters creation took us much longer than we thought it would do. The main obstacle was to understand the concept of Profile of Powers and define what to put in each category. It was more intuitive for the veterans of other games and systems; but it seemed more complicated for the two more rookies that are used to characters with lists of skills, benefits, disadvantages, etc.
It also turned a bit complicated and perhaps unnecessary summing up an explanation of all the Moves for the players. It’s seems better to understand the mechanics of Moves on the fly, once the game starts and Moves comes to play.
The two fights carried out to the moment have been very dynamic and comic-styled. The second one, where three different groups were facing each other (two of the heroes including my character, about 20 armed guards and a group of three metahuman mercenaries), was resolved brightly and with a lot of dramatic moments, and took slightly over an hour, with some breaks to comment doubts about the Moves and to discuss some strategies among the players. If we had tried this combat with another system, we believe that would have occupied almost the entire game session and would have left the other two players who did not participate in the combat with nothing to do meanwhile. In fact, these two players asked the EIC to put off for the next session their own fight that was about to start, because they preferred to watch to the end that another one what it was like a comic book or a film, plenty of epic and cinematic action and not like a classic fight of dice and hit points.
The EIC sweated blood every time he didn’t remember the mechanics of some Move, but managed everything skillfully. However, something happened that had never seen in my more than twenty years of rpgaming: the EIC begged us to let him concentrate on the storytelling! I mean, he didn’t ask for time to search for a missing rule in the book, but to better describe the consequences of each Move! Awesome!
No need to say that WiP has won a new group of fans and we look forward to continue this thrilling adventure.
My final thought is: I must work to translate the spirit of this game to more traditional games with more complex dice rolling systems.
Thank you for reading this long post.
There’s an expression in English, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Stick with WiP if it is working. I’ve seen more than my share of games ruined by switching systems
No, no, I mean playing another classic games I like very much except when a fight starts and there are many NPCs and too much dice rolls. I don’t pretend to exchange rules between different systems, only make an effort into making those sticky situations more funny and playable.
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Hey! I’m glad you guys had a fun time even though there was a learning curve there. I definitely like to just start playing and explain moves as they come up, but with a new EIC I can see how they might have a hard time just jumping in like that. I usually leave the Profile to be filled out in play as well if the players don’t have a clear idea yet and have them fill in their Profile as I give them things to respond to and they use their powers to overcome obstacles.
I try to keep all the players involved and jump around by spotlighting. Even if everyone isn’t part of the fight, it can be a fun and useful tactic to cut away just before something really dramatic in the fight to one of the characters who is doing something else, then cut back again to the fight later. I’m glad they had fun watching, but the goal should be to make sure everyone has something going on, I think.
And tell your EIC not to worry, once everyone gets familiar with the moves it’ll be a lot easier!
Kyle Simons thanks again for your comments and help.
The EIC’s plan was going back and forth between the two fights, but given the limited time resting of playing session, our two friends choose to start the next one in media res with their combat.
The rest of us agreed with this and the session ended with a truce between the mercenaries and the two heroes. The combat was a draw. My character was badly but epically wounded and the bad guys were in their last breath too. We negotiated they would share some vital information for our mission and we let them recover a mysterious hi-tech machinery hidden in a container they said it had been stolen from their employer. The guards were no more an opposition.
The characters are separated in two pairs pursuing the same dangerous people, but using two different ways. We’re expecting the moment of our final encounter and the final battle against a dreadful and dark evil that is lurking in the city.
Sounds like great fun!
Awesome post 🙂 thanks for sharing!
Hola por acá, me alegra ver que no soy el único hispanoparlante en esta comunidad. Me hace mucha ilusión tu experiencia con este juego, y espero poder probarlo pronto (compre la versión de nosolorol, por que en inglés es inconseguible) también leo y escribo en inglés, pero preferí saludarte en nuestro idioma natal. Saludos y éxitos!
Saludos a ti también, compañero.