The Sun Doesn't Set on Our Love

Another playtest of Tales of the Fisherman's Wife. This time we had 4 players, and it rocked. I'd eventually like to try it with 3 players, and I'm pretty confident that it would work. I tested new card mechanics and they worked much better. I'm still not confident about the final scene play, but it could be just insecurity. We created a great story and had fun, and that's most important to me for now.

I'm going to shelve my plans to make M'Alice an ashcan by August and focus on Fisherman's Wife.

He're a quick synopsis of our game. Emily was the Fisherman, Vincent the wife, I was the Fisherman's demons, and Meg was the Wife's demons.

Act I: The Fisherman leaves for his trip. His wife packs him rice balls with little surprises in each one. After drawing clubs, the Wife reports that she has mended 3 nets for him, and his boat is big. After drawing spades, the Fisherman tells is wife he will be gone 4 days and he has a premonition that he will lose something to the sea.

Their 6 words--The Fisherman to the Wife: "The sun doesn't set on our love."

To the Fisherman: "Turtles come alive under the moon."

Act II: The Wife encountered 3 different demons and she prevailed over all three. Sort of. The first one was a spider demon who wanted to serve her. I can't remember what she wanted from it. But at the end of the first scene, the Wife had a new little servant, who helped her around the house. The second demon wanted to seduce her, and she wanted to merge with it or steal its power, which she did. She turned it into a comb for her hair. The third demon wanted to devour her beauty. The Wife destroyed her, if I recall correctly and did away with her quickly.

Cut to Act III: The Fisherman met a demon who wanted to devour him, but the Fisherman would have no part of it. It was a creepy eel looking thing, the Fisherman prevailed. For the next three scenes, the Fisherman met the same demon, who alternated between wanting to seduce and devour the Fisherman. The Fisherman seduced the demon, and to keep from being eaten, successfully seduced her again.

So the Fisherman brought a seductive water demon home from his fishing trip. You might guess what he lost at sea.

Act IV: Meg played the industrious spider demon who now served the Wife, I played the seductive water demon, and we played in teams, demons vs. humans. The thing is, we both drew the seduction suit. So the question was, who would seduce whom. In the end, the humans won. Now that the wife had the power to breathe underwater, she could go swimming with the water demon.

They all lived happily ever after. Sort of. The Wife told the tale about how the sun did in fact set on their love, and related it back to the Fisherman's behavior with the water demon.

My memory is sketchy, and I've forgotten some details, but this game was terribly fun. Other players, please chime in!

(Cross posted at the Forge, typos and bad syntax and all.)

Clam produces an enchanted pearl of cinnabar

Last night Meg and I played Tales of the Fisherman's Wife. I have a few mechanical kinks to work out, and as I mentioned before the end is really clunky, but we had fun, and told a hilarious story complete with sex with giant fish and kelp men.

Act 1
The story begins with the Fisherman preparing for his journey. I was the Fisherman, Meg was the Wife. The Fisherman asks "How many nets have you mended and what is the condition of my boat?" Meg draws a Spade (can't remember the number) and says, "Four nets and I have made sure your boat is in tip top shape. And here's your lunch!"

The Wife asks how many days would the Fisherman be gone. I draw a Diamond card. "Two days, and because you have mended so many of my nets, I predict my baskets will overflow with fish."

They leave each other with the following 6 words. To the Wife: "Clam produces an enchanted pearl of cinnabar."

To the Fisherman: "Moon makes a silver necklace for a lady."

[Note: Articles, i.e. "that", "an", and "a" don't count in the 6 words.]

So off the Fisherman goes.

Act II
The Wife tends to their kelp drying business (they sell nori.) I'm playing the demon now. I draw a 10 of Clubs ("Devour"), Meg draws the 5 of Diamonds ("Enslave"). The demon approaches the Wife first as a giant piece of seaweed. They exchange witty barbs back and forth (ex, "I want to have you for dinner"), and when we get to the final card, the kelp demon transforms into a handsome man, and declares that he wants to "devour" the Wife, but not in a food way. I have the high card for Clubs. But Meg as the high card for Diamonds. The first round ends up in a tie. The kelp demon devours the Wife in a conjugal way, and is her slave for the night.

The next day (Scene 2) the kelp demon returns. This time he wants to Possess (Spades) the Wife. The Wife wants to "Steal a Power" (Clubs). Meg wins this round. She is immune to his charms, and at the last minute she steals a shell from his hair and gains the power to summon water creatures. Dejected, the kelp demon turns back into kelp and floats away.

Act III
(Scene 1) I now play the Fisherman, and Meg plays the demon. I draw a Heart (Seduce), and Meg draws a Diamond (Serve). Fisherman discovers a giant golden fish in his net. Immediately he is smitten. He places her in a giant tank and woos her, while she offers to serve him. I win this round, and the Fisherman seduces the fish demon. Yup, while she's still a fish.

(Scene 2)
The demon returns, this time to Possess (Spades). The Fisherman wants to Seduce (Hearts) her again. This time she changes into the form of a woman with glistening scales. Now the demon has 4 chances (4 Scenes) to succeed, since the Fisherman has 4 nets. And in the end, Meg and I both had the high card, but the Ace of Spades is the unbeatable card. When played by the demon it becomes "Supplant", and when played by a human it is "Destroy". So the Fisherman is supplanted. The fish demon controls him outside his body with strings like a marionette. They return home early.

Act IV
The Wife suspects something, and the fish demon knows her brother the kelp demon has been consorting with the Wife. The fish demon was going to try to Enslave the Wife, and the Wife was going to try to Destroy (Ace of Spades) the fish demon. The end game mechanics need some work, so we just fudged it. The Wife tries to save the Fisherman from the clutches of the fish demon by using her new power to summon water creatures. She calls on crabs to try to clip the strings that bind her husband to the fish demon. In the end, the fish demon strikes a bargain with the Wife. If she takes the Fisherman with her back to the sea, she'll call her brother back to become the Wife's lover. The Wife was happy with that, especially when reminded that kelp can grow up to 2 feet a day.

The Fisherman asks his Wife to tell him a story with the 6 words before they part forever. She tells the cautionary tale of how a clam fell in love with a bird, and out of love and from a piece of wood, the clam produced a beautiful pearl of cinnabar. The bird died, the clam died, and that's all the Wife had to say about inter-species love affairs.

The kelp demon returns, the fish demon gets her man, and they all live reasonably happily ever after.

There are a few mechanics I want to change, but as it is, it's playable and definitely fun. It's a short game, and playable with 3 and 4 players. The end game needs the most work. I'm going to take the rules down for a day or two while I make the first round of changes. Chris and I are going to play it tonight and see how it goes.

First Draft! Tales of the Fisherman's Wife

Wow! That was fast. I love it when I have an idea and it just flows to completion. I wrote the rules for Tales of the Fisherman's Wife last night, and even got it from notebook to computer. Print and play it and tell me what you think. The final act is a little loose and needs work, and there are parts where play might be a little clunky, so please give me some feedback. I got rid of the d4's and use cards only for the whole game. D4's are too pointy to play with in bed.

Some feedback questions:
Is play long enough or too long?
How do the cards aid in narration?
What really works? What did you love about it?
What's confusing? What totally doesn't work?
What needs work? What needs explaining?
What would you be sad about if I changed it?
Anything else you'd like to say.

The pdf isn't here any more. The game is almost finished. I'm putting together the books for GenCon. See you then!

Enjoy!

M'Alice Works!

Tonight we playtested M'Alice, and what I have so far works! The mechanics do what I want them to do, character creation works, the story telling was fun. I'm all abuzz with joy! We just did a few scenes to test out the mechanics and character creation, but I got to see how the dynamics between the PC's could change. The game is fun, too!

Anyway, here's quick description the characters and how character creation goes. I'm afraid I'm making it sound more complicated than it really is, but here goes.

There are 3 types of PC's: children, adults, and a doll. There is no GM. Each character gets 3 dice to roll in a conflict. The doll has extra dice, but I'll explain that in a sec. The first die never changes ("Fantasy" for children, "Mental State" for adults, and "Type" for dolls. The second die depends on who owns the truth. The third die is one of 3 powers, attributes, gifts, or in the case of adults, authority. In a conflict, you decide which one of your 3 descriptive attributes you use as your third die.

It was Meg, Vincent, and me playing. Meg played the child (Charlie, age 7), Vincent played the adult (Ed, an older man, caretaker of a cluster of cabins up in the backwoods of Maine), and I played the doll (Cosmo, a teddy bear made of real bear fur).

Die 1: Fantasy, Mental State, and Type of Doll
So Meg's character, the child Charlie, was 7. So her Fantasy was a d10. A child's fantasy lever is determined by their age. Ages 2-6 are d12, ages 7-12 are d10, ages 13-18 are d8.

Adult characters get this fun little thing to determine their mental state where another player reads a list of words for their mental state: d12 words, d10 words, and d8 words .The adult writes all words that apply to him. Your die is determined by the die size of most of your words. Here are the words Vincent chose:
d12's: dictator, step-parent.
d10's: shady past, citizen, friend, addicted to porn, clairvoyant, mood disorder, arrogant.
d8's: drug addict, poor, ugly, in denial.
I love the list. I'll post it sometime soon. It's one of my favorite things about the game so far. So Ed's mental state was d10. (All the words apply to the character, even if they aren't of the majority die.) I'm gonna have to make something similar for the child.

Dolls also have a list, but they can only choose one term. Other terms on the list may describe the doll, but the doll player chooses one. I chose "Teddy Bear". Cosmo was made of bear fur, and was hand made (which is on the list as well). Teddy bears are d12's.

Die 2: Gifts, Authority, Powers
Each character type writes 3, and each one has a die size. Children have gifts (d12, d8, d6), adults have authority (d12, d8, d6), dolls have powers or weapons (d10, d10, d8). Cosmo had other powers, like he could teleport himself, and he bled when shot, but they couldn't be used in a conflict, only in narrative. We had a tricky thing where Ed wasn't necessarily using any of his listed authority, so I have to think about how to work with that.

Charlie's gifts were "resourceful" (d12), "agile" (d8), and "charming" (d6).
Ed's authorities were "scaring" (d12), "belittling" (d8), and "teaching" (d6).
Cosmo's powers were "I whisper things in your ear" (d10), "soothing" (d10), and "made of bear fur" (d8).
I'm wondering if 3 for each character is enough. We'll see.

Die 3: The truth and loyalty
At the beginning of the game, children write out the original truth. It's a a statement that implicates one character. It doesn't have to declare whether another character is good or evil. When you win a conflict, you can alter this original truth, or completely replace it, or characters write a truth about other characters. Since children own the truth in the beginning, they get a d12. Adults start at d8. In conflicts, you can win the chance to alter or completely replace that original truth or create or modify a truth about another character. The truth at the beginning of the game was "Ed knows where the treasure is." Vincent modified that with "what's left of it". Vincent and I wrote the following truths about each other's characters:
"Ed got away with murder" and "Cosmo flinches at gunfire".

Dolls cannot modify or replace the original truth. What's more important to them is loyalty. When in a conflict against a player who plays the doll's shadow ally (I'll explain that in a sec), they roll a d12. If the conflict is against their child, the doll rolls a d10, and if the doll isn't in the scene, but wants to jump into the conflict (which all players can do) they roll d6.

Shadow allies
So NPCs can come and go, and can be played by whoever speaks up. Shadow allies are characters that only show up in flashbacks. They essentially write their PC's past, and they are always played by the player whose PC is in conflict with that character. So Ed's shadow ally was Hal, his step son. I played Hal. Charlie's shadow ally was Nancy, a girl from home, played by Vincent. Cosmo's shadow ally was Fred, the man who shot the bear and made Cosmo. Vincent played Fred.

We did one flashback scene, where it was revealed that the buried treasure was cash, drugs, and a gun, left by some drug dealers who were staying in Cabin #5, but took off mysteriously. Hal left the money and drugs for his step-father. What I didn't know in making up this thing about Ed's past was that Vincent wrote "drug addict" on his character sheet. It's so fun when things work out like that!

Malice
At the beginning of each scene, the doll rolls a d4 to determine the malice. When a conflict comes up, a doll can opt into the conflict or change the dice of the child in the conflict. So if a doll is acting out of malice and decides not to opt into the conflict, it rolls 2 d4's, and replaces those dice with 2 of the child's higher dice. If the doll is acting out of benevolence, it rolls 2 d12's and switches the child's lower dice for those. There's temporary malice and benevolence and permanent malice and benevolence. If a doll rolls a permanent malice or benevolence she still rolls the malice die, and can still act benevolently for a scene even if she's malicious. Make sense? As it turned out, I rolled temporary malice once and then ever other roll was permanent malice. Cosmo was out to get poor Charlie.

I'll save the story and mechanics for another day. I'm really happy about how well this game is turning out! It's inspired by horror flicks from the 70's and 80's, particularly ones that feature evil dolls (like Dolls), evil adults (The Shining), and bad children (The Omen). Not just the notion that there are evil beings in these movies, but also the relationship dynamics and how it can be difficult to tell just who is the bad guy. The research for this game is terribly fun, too. Horror movies from the era I'm working leave so much more to the imagination, they're creepier without being graphic.

I plan to have an ashcan of this for GenCon, which seems totally possible at the rate it's going. Yay!

Note: M'Alice is short for "My Alice", and of course, a play on the word "Malice". Alice is the doll who will be on the cover. Ingrid is very fond of Alice. Bea is afraid of her.