A while ago, this category changed from "Directed Self-Promotion" to "Directed Promotion". The idea was that people would also promote other people's games. But nobody ever does.

So...to change that...

Over the weekend, I got the chance to play Covenant. I've wanted to play Covenant since forever and the game lived up to the anticipation.

Covenant has a superb setting. It's post-millennial: it's set in a world where everyone expected the apocalypse, but it didn't happen. And now they're wondering what they do with the beliefs they had before. And that's just...something new...that I haven't seen before. It's not sci-fi and it's not fantasy, although there's bits of both.

It's also a nasty, back-biting little game. In our game, it ran best when players worked against each other, and I love games like that.

Also, it has fun dice mechanics.

I really can't recommend Covenant enough. Perhaps it gets overlooked: the author doesn't shout about it much. But it's a great game and one that you feel has been playtested to death. It takes the best bits from other indie games and sort of makes them its own.

Anyway, I'm going to bed now, and I'll post more about the convention I went to later. But Covenant was my best experience of the weekend and I really, really recommend you take a look at it.

Oh, and if you've got any questions, let me have them. Especially if they're directly about the game, because, honestly, I think it should be talked about more.

Graham

I should also chime in with my extreme like of Covenant. It is indeed a quality piece of work.

I played in Matts game at the Concrete Cow convention in Milton Keynes recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. I beleive this was the same game as the one Matt ran at Conpulsion. Matt: I understand that you felt more satisfied with the way the game ran at Conpulsion and that the Concrete Cow game was less satisfying. Would you be able to tell me why you think this might be?

Cheers
Malcolm

I'd say let people create the Conventions and Motifs entirely themselves. I love that part of the game and the way it enhances the feel of the game, the setting and interaction between the characters.

I've also been writing an AP (again, as yet unposted) on the game you ran at Concrete Cow that, think, covers some similar territory to what you are thinking of. Is your AP a combined one on the 'death in Venice' game as a whole, or your experiences from one specific time you ran it? if you're concentrating on the overall experience, I'll just convert my AP notes into comments when you post your thoughts. If not, I'll fire away with a thread somewhere on the game at Concrete Cow.

Cheers
Malcolm

Hi Peter!

There are definitely influences at work, though not always in the way folks think. For example, although Dogs was an influence, the original resolution method goes back before that game was published, the influence is in the option to bow out of a conflict and lose even if you're winning.

Speed is definitely brisk. I wanted a game that would have a finite play time and pack in the awesome. So it's really designed to last three sessions and no more. A lot of the influence is from TV shows like 24, where it's all about the quick cutting and aggressive scene framing. Trying to get that phrenetic, "and then this goes wrong" thing in there.

Yeah, there is player scene framing, but only in specific circumstances. The real focus of the game is the protagonists deciding what they believe. They all start out with three deeply held beliefs, stated as those one-liners truisms you hear in conspiracy movies, stuff like "the ends justify the means". Things they held true, but are now in doubt. If, after a conflict, your character has made a final decision on which way he now feels about that, he gets some power to either shift things around mechanic wise or frame a new scene.

So, if your character has "Honour is all that matters", the GM frames scenes that put that honour on the line. Maybe you're character is forced to betray his friend to serve his faction. Maybe he holds firm. Either way could resolve that truism.

Fairly light, there's some info in the sample pages available at the site about group prep. Aside from fleshing out a few possible conflicts of interest and agendas. Most of it is on the fly, largely cos the information you might need is on the character sheets in front of you. Since all sheets have a region dividing important NPCs into Self / Society / Faction you can quickly build scenes by pulling folks from different regions and putting them in conflict "OK, Nicholai is in your self region, what happens when your faction leader asks you to betray him..."

Posted By: MalcolmCraig Is your AP a combined one on the 'death in Venice' game as a whole, or your experiences from one specific time you ran it?

I'm focusing on the Conpulsion run (though I do highlight the changes I made)

-Matt

Arise thread!

I finally (hey what's a few couple of months?), got round to writing that Covenant Actual Play