Playtest 1: Metatopia 2016 Friday 11am-1pm

Playtest 1: Metatopia 2016 Friday 11am-1pm

Featured:

Mark Diaz Truman as La Dona

Michael Miller as El Caballero

Laura Simpson as La Gemela

Dev Purkayastha as La Empleada

Adrian Stein as El Jefe

Brandon Leon-Gambetta as El Vividor

For the first ever playtest of Pasión de los Pasiónes I wanted to just see what works, what doesn’t, and whether it is worth pursuing. I scheduled about 3 hours after the playtest for massive rewrites just in case and was kind of freaking out for anyone to see the game.

Character creation worked as intented, people jumped on things pretty quickly and we had a group formed up, which was my first intention. La Gemela chose to be a twin of an existing player character (La Empleada) which made for all kinds of drama down the line.

Brief Storyline

El Caballero is in town in order to try to bust the crime ring of El Jefe wide open. He was instantly being dreamy and started up racking up those plot twist points, which I think really helped to motivate the rest of the group. I’m exceptionally happy with this audience trigger (The teenage girl falls a little bit in love) and it’s singing in a really solid way. All three Caballeros spoke in a suave voice and were gentlemanly. It was a delight.

In any case, El Jefe has a son, El Vividor who wakes up shirtless with a bump on the back of his head outside La Empleada’s bedroom. She brings him inside to nurse his head, La Dona arrives in order, and El Vividor hides under the sheets. A flashback goes solidly (though it took a little more time to figure out whether it should roll or not than I’d like, I want to clarify this better) and El Jefe shows up (this room is in his mansion) to find his son with La Empleada and La Dona. El Jefe is scary, charming, and flirty with La Dona in a way that really hit the scene great, then he grabs El Vividor by the ear and DRAGS him out. La Dona and La Empleada have a brief scene where they discuss their sneaky plot, La Dona wants La Empleada to seduce El Vividor.

Then La Gemela arrives in town. Her family credit card was declined, so she’s back to claim what’s hers. La Dona and La Gemela meet up and make plans, if La Empleada can’t close the deal, she can. It is ALSO revealed that La Dona had clubbed El Vividor previously! It was tense and awesome and El Jefe arrives at the club in order to chat up La Dona. There’s some more little flirtation, then El Caballero sees the two of them in the club (this will be useful for him to catch them later on!)

La Gemela heads over to El Jefe’s mansion in order to meet up with El Vividor and seduce him. She rocks her feminine wiles and he’s entranced by her, using his love for her sister to get him (this game gets a little complicated, but just freaking wait until the second two playtests with more characters). At this point, El Jefe arrives in his helecoptor with La Empleada in the helecoptor with him! The father and son stare at the twins and can’t figure out what is going on. La Dona is coming over for a date, so El Vividor calls El Caballero so that everyone will be in the last scene.

El Caballero does some awesome charming, El Jefe and El Vividor yell a bit, and La Dona sets up a wedding between El Vividor and… someone. We don’t figure out this episode BECAUSE the game came to an end (always leave on a cliffhanger! This is a telenovela after all!).

Discussion

The choices made for characters made sense to me, they were some of the most obviously fun ones. El Jefe gets to be mean and evil, La Empleada gets to chase romance headfirst, La Gemela gets to be in the way, La Dona gets to manipulate, and El Caballero gets to charm and fight. I chose El Vividor in order to fill in the roll of a second love interest (I was a little worried La Empleada needed someone else to flirt with).

This game was run as a GMless game with players essentially randomly putting down what the scenes would be. All of the players were pretty experienced with RPGs in general and PbtA specifically, so it clicked in nicely. I’m not sure whether GMless works, but it seemed to click at least for a small group with a lot of experience. I want more testing of this.

Moves were used pretty regularly and we hit (I think) 1 plot twist, which is fine for a 2 hour time. Twist checks seem to work, they are fun and make things pretty raucous. That said, some are DEFINITELY harder to hit than others which needs some work.

The feedback I got from this one were overwhelmingly positive. I’m so excited to have gotten this response and got some good tips for some extra things I might need. There isn’t a move at all for deceit (MENTIROSA!) which I think is needed, though I didn’t do a good job of adding it in before the second session.

In terms of playbooks, I’m worried that La Empleada is necessary. I hope she isn’t, not because I don’t like the playbook (it’s one of my favorite tropes), but because I want everything to be optional.

Further Playtest Suggested

-Small Group Less Experienced GMless

-Small Group GMed

————————————————

So that was playtest 1! I couldn’t have possibly had more fun. It was wonderful. Thank you all so much for being a part of it and PLEASE let me know if there are specific notes and things you’d like to highlight or discuss! I still have the written notes that I need to examine and put more into effect, this is broad strokes.