The Court of the Empress: Playtest Report

Posted by Neel Krishnaswami on February 12, 2006 at 11:15 PM

Last night we were missing one of Nine Worlds players, so we playtested The Court of the Empress.

Short version: The sucker works, pretty much exactly the way I hoped it would.

Longer version:

We ran the game three times, with three different players playing the Empress. Each game ran for three rounds, with three (one time, four) players playing courtiers.

At the start of the session, I wrote all of the key phrases on a blackboard, so that we could easily have them all in one place. This was Alex's idea, and it was very good.

The first time through, I played the Empress, and the other three players played the courtiers. We were feeling our way a little, and I deliberately limited myself to one death per cycle (the minimum pace) to ensure that I could hit all of the mechanical bits. Laura joined for the last round of my my turn playing the Empress. I asked the players what their favorite play was, and Alex managed a fantastic save against Laura after she totally proved he was unfit to live -- he pointed out that her condemnation of him revealed a familiarity with a banned play (which had gotten Nick's courtier killed).

The second run was with Alex. He has a tendency to undercut himself in conversation, so he had to stretch himself a bit in order to be properly imperious and demanding. And he did get better as we played more rounds. He was also responsible for my funniest death; I played a strongman visiting the court, and I tried to impress him by lifting men on my shoulders. He ordered imperial guardsmen leap onto my back until I couldn't bear any more weight, and then had me killed for lying when I boasted I could bear the whole court on my shoulders. My gasping, gurgling death was a hit.

There was another neat round when Alex started executing courtiers for saying inadvertently sexist things. Laura then picked up on it, and they had a wonderful back-and-forth before Alex had her PC executed too. I was very happy to see that come up, because I made the Empress female and the courtiers male on purpose. Basically, the setting evokes a decadent, antique past, and that makes it really easy and tempting for your narration -- which has to fit that flavor -- to fall into using sexist tropes. That is likely to piss off the Empress, who then kills your character. So the courtier players are put just a little more off-balance.

Alex thought that he thought that the point total for a successful favor might be a bit too high. I don't know if I agree, but there's surely no harm in knocking the reward down to 4.

On the last run, Laura ran. She was a wicked awesome Empress; she was heartless, fickle and unpredictable, and gleefully killed off her courtiers -- her first act was to kill us all on the first round, just to let us know she meant business. At the same time, she still showed off enough consistency that you were sure that if you hit just the right mix of mature self-respect and sycophantic flattery you could live. I died immediately in the first round, lasted a second cycle into the second ("that makes sense, but I just don't like you!"), and just barely won the third -- in the last one, she demanded that I convince her why she shouldn't reward me in order to receive a reward, which is just a wonderfully cruel demand. I was successful, so she decided that I receive nothing!

Nick also had a hilarious run as the representative of the island nation of Canada, which he reported had been defeated by the Imperial Armada in under two minutes of battle. He had all of the players cracking up, including both Canadians at the table.

Each a round of play tended to take somewhere between five and fifteen minutes of play, with 3 or 4 players. Laura observed that the rounds took longer each time through each time, because the players got noticeably better at figuring out what kinds of sycophantic flattery worked.

We did have a rules mix-up in the last round of play. Laura couldn't decide whether to kill my character or Alex's, and had us compete. She had forgotten she could kill us both, and the competition between Alex and me meant that Nick didn't get to talk as much. Moral: turn taking works, and messing with it can sideline a player for too long. Another thing I liked was the rule against table talk during a round. This had two big benefits. First, the rounds went by much more quickly, and second, the fact that one person had the stage at a time meant that they could go further without interruption, which meant that they were usually much funnier.

The whole thing -- 3 Empresses running 3 rounds each -- took two and a half hours, with around 90 minutes spent actually in the round structure. The rest of it was spent in table talk and general social chatg works, and messing with it can sideline a player for too long. Another thing I liked was the rule against table talk during a round. This had two big benefits. First, the rounds went by much more quickly, and second, the fact that one person had the stage at a time meant that they could go further without interruption, which meant that they were usually much funnier.

The whole thing -- 3 Empresses running 3 rounds each -- took two and a half hours, with around 90 minutes spent actually in the round structure. The rest of it was spent in table talk and general social chat.