Played in one session (of a 7 session story arc) of The Watch as a guest player. This was scheduled as part of The Gauntlet’s online gaming.
Overall, I had a blast. Love the way The Ties That Bind target both personal and clan themes (made it very easy to step into an existing game). It was my first PbtA game with dedicated missions (similar to Night Witches, maybe?), and for one session, I can say that I was into it. I’m used to playing story games with scene framing and I actually enjoyed the: let’s decide as players, let’s all roll, then let’s figure out how it all ties together narratively and play a couple of scenes.
One thing that came up in our post-session talk: Does anyone envision that Mission Moves may become stale after many sessions? Other than the final conflict, does anyone see the possibility of customizing Mission Moves for specific missions (maybe not all the time, but for specific parts of a game or story arc)?
http://www.supernovembergames.com/tomes-of-tomes/2017/7/11/the-gauntlet-and-the-watch
Thanks for sharing, Tomer. I’m still working away at your article but I love what I’m reading so far! 😀
Great write-up! I see your point re: the Mission Moves. We definitely designed them to be as generic as possible to suit every situation; but I can see how some players might find them a little bland after a while. Adding in new custom Complications is a great idea though, and I would encourage groups to try that, especially ones tightly catered to the events in the game so far. Could be really neat.
Thanks Andrew Medeiros! To be fair, the moves and complications are generic enough that I can see a lot of mileage from them, and because of that I don’t see any urgent need to supplement them, but custom mission moves could be a really cool addition to specific story arcs or campaigns.
As an example, I envision a particular situation with 2 players and 3 mission moves, where the ones chosen have a strong impact on the approach… and maybe the one not chosen has a strong impact on consequences. (Almost similar to the DW move of making a perilous journey, when you have 2 players and have to auto-fail one of the 3 moves)
All that said, I’ve played one session so far and GM’d none, so this all comes with a grain of salt. 🙂 Looking forward to more.
That sounds like an awesome custom move an MC could write for their game. I’d love to see that someday.