Alpha test of the new Man play took place on Saturday in a generally successful first look. The player reported she liked making all the choices although she came to dread making the roll, considering the negative consequences 🙂 The constant threat of needing to have a handful of silver on hand by winter did a good job of adding pressure to the Man’s decisions, I think.
We had a couple of the “catastrophe” occurrences, one which we did on screen: getting ambushed by outlaws while trying to take goods to market. The Thrall took a spear to her back, but Thorolf the outlaw eventually tried to help her escape Iceland out of guilt.
Observations and open questions:
* If you get Bonds as a result of the Profit, name who you have them with right away! We didn’t always do it, but at the very least it will create a larger imaginary space of community.
* A well run farm will have the Man’s wife or close friends using their Bonds with him to help his work 🙂 Or he can go to the Seithkona to get some black magic.
* Could we perhaps simplify this move so that you might have something like: Pick 1, 2, or 3 jobs from this list, pick as many Profit as jobs from this list, and then choose as many Catastrophes from this list. On a 10+ profit all around, on a 7-9 you pick one profit and the MC picks at least one catastrophe, on a 6- it’s bad all around.
* It might work better if the Man can just choose his Obligations anew each time. The Operator has Gigs, and they’re specific ongoing jobs; but the Man has some obligations that don’t make sense to keep carrying through. The Hard Working move will need to get rewritten, probably, in this scenario.
* I made a small change to the Raiding obligation, which I initially saw as hitting another small farm in Iceland but probably makes better sense as buying a share in a raiding venture to the British Isles. The reward became a chest of silver, the catastrophe impoverishment, making it a very high risk and reward venture.