Augh! Mathematica has to be ready for Gen Con, so I’m playtesting it every chance I get.

Trey, Phil, and John came by to playtest a scenario I threw together to put the game through its social conflict paces. They played members of the household of the high class courtesan La Fiamenta. La Fiamenta is a refugee from the sack of Rome, desperately trying to re-establish her courtesan business in Venice. Money is running out. Tonight is the dinner party that will either capture her a rich patron, or leave her and the PCs out on the street. The situation is ripped from Sarah Dunant’s novel “In the Company of the Courtesan”.

I put the question on the table “Can a Woman Decide her own Fate?” and inform the players that we will decide the answer to this today. I tell them that if I, the GM, win the question, La Fiamenta will retire to the country and the PCs will all be left penniless without a job.

We played seven scenes in total.

John plays Rugio, La Fiamenta’s dwarf entertainer/accountant. In the first scene (set by John) Rugio makes a deal with Lucio the leg breaker of Garibaldi the loan shark that he will help Garibaldi secure La Fiamenta as his mistress. Rugio garners a bonus die towards making this happen later. No dice are rolled as both give in the conflict.

Trey plays Vicaro, the handsome gondolier, secretly in love with La Fiamenta. He decides to convince Lucio the leg breaker that Vicaro can pay of his debt to Garibaldi by helping secure La Fiamenta as his mistress. Trey calls on the question “Can a woman decide her own fate” to help power the conflict. He wins, so he gets to put a vote on the question. He puts it on the “yes” side. If he wins the question, he hopes to narrate that La Fiamenta and Vicaro end up happily retired somewhere.

Phil plays Sarah, the apothecary who mixes magical perfumes. Phil sets a scene where Sarah is helping La Fiamenta prepare for the party when La Fiamenta starts quizzing her about the party guests. The PCs decide that the best course is to incline her towards Garibaldi, a tactic which almost backfires as La Fiamenta feels she’s being manipulates. All the PCs have to help Sarah win her roll. John calls on the question for his helping roll. La Fiamenta poses a new question so she can call on it, “Is beauty skin deep?” John makes his helping roll, so chooses to write his name on “Is beauty skin deep?” on the “no” side, since his character has a key about his self-worth not being reducible to his dwarfish body.

Now it’s my turn to set a scene. I set a scene where La Fiamenta is raging because she’s found out that Garibaldi is the ugliest man in Venice and she wants him dis-invited immediately. The PCs must scramble to overcome her rather considerable resistance.

In the ensuing scenes, Rugio sabotages the other dinner guest Carmello so he arrives late. Sarah poses a question “Is the inquisition right to ban alchemy” (since she fears the inquisition). There’s also a cool four-way conflict where Vicaro, Carmello, and Garibaldi each try to get Sarah to mix them a potion to help them attain their ends.

Due to an interruption, we didn’t have time to get to the end game where the questions are resolved and narrated. However, we did get to see the question mechanic in action. The characters and players all matched up to the questions very well, and there seemed to be some real tension over which questions they cared about most. I got a huge page of notes to refine the rules and a couple of really good conflicts to include as samples in the rules.
I’ve got a mechanic where players can compel one another’s keys and even put keys on NPCs to compel, but we all forgot about it. I think we’ll try it again before I think about cutting it.

Sounds like a great playtest! So who gets to pose the questions? Do they emerge from play or are they a part of the characters?

Great novel to base it on too - I was lucky enough to attend a reading by Sarah Dunant last year. Fantastic stuff.