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February 04, 2006
Prometheus stole my robot!
Our first session of Nine Worlds was today. As usual, the first session was a little slow, as we talked about the game, figured out character creation, and worked out how the conflict rules worked.
1. It's a surprising amount of work to come up with good Muses. We had to talk about it several times, and we ended up with the heuristic of asking each other, "Is there a way to end this conflict?" The title of this post comes from one of the player's Muses, which is to get back his robot (which Prometheus stole, of course). Naturally, one of the other players has a Muse to deliver the robot to Zeus, too.
2. The conflict rules look like they'll be more fun when the conflict is muddy, with multiple sides and everybody opposed to different people, than when you have an 1-on-1 conflict. This is because you are more likely to end up with lots of players narrating in a multiway scene, whereas in the other only one player narrates. Plus, the way it's easy for some people on a side to win, and others lose, is quite nice.
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Comments
It's funny, we had no trouble coming up with muses. You might try the trick we did... we made up muses for each other.
Posted by: Vaxalon at Feb 4, 2006 11:43:51 PM
We did it in a group style. It was just a bit of work to get out of the disad mentality, if you know what I mean.
I think I wasn't clear as to why the conflict system works really well in muddy situations. The reason is that "opposition" doesn't have to be symmetric. The important thing is that each character's goal be something someone else in the conflict opposes, but they don't have to pair. Suppose we've got Antigone, Bellerophon and Circe. We can have a conflict in which Antigone has a goal which Bellerophon opposes, and Bellerophon has a goal Circe opposes, and Circe has a goal Anaxagoras opposes.
This is neat.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 5, 2006 12:29:42 PM
I'm not sure what you mean by "disad mentality"... muses don't seem much like disads to me, mechanically speaking.
Posted by: Vaxalon at Feb 6, 2006 1:47:16 PM
They aren't disads, but we kept coming up with not-Muses like "Joe is hunted by the Thanatoi." This makes a fine trait in Champions, but the cool part about Muses is that they are intended to be resolved, and so we had to think a little harder to make sure we could actually get closure on the Muse.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 6, 2006 2:57:30 PM
Man, I love that "Prometheus stole my robot!" Muse. Why would Prometheus steal a robot? Does Prometheus still have the robot? How did the character end up with the robot in the first place? Did he make it? Is it... a GIANT robot?!? TO FIGHT TITANS WITH?????
Well, maybe not the last two.
If I was making a Archon right now, though, I'd give him "I must destroy my robot before Prometheus can learn it's secret".
Posted by: Joe at Feb 6, 2006 8:50:02 PM
The other characters had some pretty awesome Muses, too.
One of the characters is an Indiana-Jones-like adventurer, who's trying to rediscover the tenth planet Xena, and on the side wants to find Prometheus and Athena's child to blackmail Prometheus. Another character is the only man who ever escaped from Hades, whose Muses are to get his wife to leave her second husband and come back to him, and who was bullied into doing a favor for Prometheus -- delivering this-here robot to Jupiter. :)
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 6, 2006 10:52:39 PM
Was the muse "Prometheus stole my robot!" or was it "Get my robot back from Prometheus, who stole it."?
Posted by: Vaxalon at Feb 8, 2006 3:51:51 PM
The second.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 8, 2006 8:41:04 PM
