In the weekend, we played film noir Geiger Counter.
The big innovation that we thought really worked was using Teaser Posters to introduce the characters. Posters of the character in action that combine name, actor, and survival and advantage dice. "We see Nick Cave, on a dark street, face hanging mournfully. His gun's still smoking - he's just shot someone. Underneath is the name: Tommy Falcone. Tommy's survival die is 'Be a decent person'; his advantage die is 'Good at killing stuff'."
The short version of the game: Someone's killing people involved with a film that's about to go into production.
The Kills: Clint Eastwood (the PI) and Wallace Shawn (the scriptwriter) die together in a burning boarding house, of smoke inhalation and rooftop face-stabbing, respectively.
Nick Cave (the gangster trying to go straight) dies in a double-cross at Griffith Observatory.
That leaves Christopher Walken (the sleazy agent) stabbed to death in a canyon after escaping from his wrecked car, Dakota Fanning (the loveable urchin) pursued, over-run and horribly murdered for knowing too much ... and Michael Cera (the producer's clueless nephew) framed for all the murders by the femme fatale at the heart of it all.
The Menace (turned out to be): brutal, human, well-dressed, more than one of them, rational-ish, well informed, blandly very good-looking (resentful C-grade actors), and one step ahead of the characters.
I discovered that if you're running a noir (or the trouble before the menaces starts killing everyone is a 'mystery'), then I'd probably like to have us all sort out what's going on before we start playing. Geiger Counter was too fast-paced (and we only had a three-hour slot) to really give us a chance to create a coherent explanation for what's going on.
If I run this noir-style scenario again, after characters are selected I'd say "Let's sort out who's screwing over whose character", and have them pointing guns (or schemes) at each other by the time the first scene starts.
I followed the outline for the Gamma edition a bit. Brainstorming 2x character archetypes was seriously great, and got us all on the same page. I messed up on Friction and Goals (see the previous couple of paras). Everything else ran pretty smoothly except that I (and Mike Sands, a GC veteran who was also playing) forgot to introduce advantage dice.
In some ways, forgetting about the advantage dice on the map until near the end made things a bit more exciting. Probably we would have had less dead people, however.
There needs to be a call-out for the best moment I remember - the gangster trying to go straight taking his third condition during a shootout between the Menace and his crew, deciding that he turned on his own guys and shot them down before dying himself as he achieved his goal. Nice.
Nice. Sounds like a fun time. Did you get a picture of the map, by any chance?
Yeah, it's definitely critical to get everyone on the same page about the general nature of the menace before things get too far along. Otherwise, things can get either scattered (like Lost before Brian K. Vaughn joined the writing team) or gonzo like a bad SciFi Channel movie.
What I do is start a little discussion by saying, "Look, before we do the trailer, let's figure out what the trailer's going to tell us about the menace. I mean, when you go in to watch Jaws, having seen the posters or the trailer, you know the menace is basically 'giant killer shark'. It's the exact details that you don't find out until you actually watch the movie." Even in realistic suspense movies, say, The Departed, you know there's going to be this tangled web of cops and mobsters, yeah?
And that's also established by -- the best thing about the Gamma edition, in my opinion -- the friction, which points everybody at everybody else or makes characters choose sides before the menace even arrives. The friction is basically the initial "bang" of Geiger Counter and I can't imagine how I ever played without it. In Jaws, before the shark arrives, the beach industry is already going downhill, characters have relationship problems with each other, and you just know they're not prepared to deal with any disaster. In Pitch Black, they're transporting a serial killer alongside some religious pilgrims and other random folk and crash land on an alien planet. THEN, the monsters arrive to eat them.
But, yeah, I hope you do get to play it again. One thing I've really appreciated about playtesting Geiger is -- since it calls players to flex different muscles than the ones they might normally use in play -- there's a lot of room for getting better at it the more you play it, like a good board game.
Yep, I definitely felt I didn't guide the 'establishing the Friction' process enough.
When I read about 'the Friction' in your Gamma outline, I nodded and thought 'That's exactly right.' One of the script-writing blogs or manuals I've read (I think it might be Alex Epstein in Crafty Scriptwriting) described it as "This is what the movie would be, if the movie never happened."
Posted By: Jonathan Waltonthere's a lot of room for getting better at it the more you play it
I think you're right... certainly my previous games influenced my play in this one.
This time, I was a lot less concerned about 'my guy' and thinking more about what the next cool thing to happen should be when my scene came around. I'm pretty sure that was a net win for everyone's fun.