After scaring up a free copy of the boxing-themed roleplaying game, Contenders, I was pretty anxious to try it out. Since I haven't had a regular, or even semi-regular, gaming group in a number of years, the GM-less mechanics were a definitely appealing, as it took the onus off me in terms of making the game happen from beginning to end. It always seemed to fall to me to entertain everyone else, and I never got to enjoy just playing.
Once I'd completed a session of Obi-Wan Adventures with my son (that's for another post), I corralled my wife at the kitchen table and set about hashing out Contenders in action.
It should be noted at the outset that my wife doesn't care for boxing. I'll admit that I've fallen in and out of love with the sweet science over the years; the sad state of heavyweight boxing, in particular, is enough to drive anyone away. But this is about Contenders, so let's not get distracted.
The freebie version of Contenders, put together over a 24-hour period by designer JJ Prince, is just 16 pages including the stuff like the cover, a table of contents and a (very simple) character sheet. It doesn't take long to read. Surprisingly, it takes even less time to put across the gist of the game to someone completely unfamiliar with it; I was able to communicate the character-creation process to my wife in about 60 seconds.
I already had a character in mind when I sat down: Yale, a bruiser of a guy with a recovering alchoholic for a girlfriend and more brawn than brains when it comes to the fight game. I placed Yale in Baltimore, since it's local and there's a fairly successful boxing club/promotion in the area, as well.
My wife came up with Shawna, an angry young woman -- also from Baltimore, playing off Yale's background -- raising her little brother without their parents and hoping for a breakthrough in the ring that'll save the both of them from poverty, drugs and gang violence.
In the past, especially with games like D&D, I've found the character-creation process fairly isolating and mechanical: everybody sits down, crunches numbers and then afterward the group tries to make it all fit together. With Contenders, my wife and I collaborated almost the entire time, working out a sketch of both characters with which we could move forward.
This relaxed back-and-forth continued into the game itself. Once upon a time I used to think that speaking in character and rigidly adhering to the whole improvisational acting thing was what roleplay was all about. Over time, and particularly recently, I've come to understand that roleplaying is about bringing out character with whatever methods come to hand. If that means conceptualizing a scene piece by piece, getting the point of how it fits in the story and moving on... so be it.
I ceded to the missus and let her have the first scene. We figured that Shawna worked for a Subway kind of sandwich shop for maximum hours and minimum wage. She wanted a raise, and though we both fully expected things to end poorly (service-industry bosses can be real pricks), Shawna got the raise she deserved for, among other things, picking up extra shifts, always being on time and performing well on the job.
We got more detail and character meaning out of this no-dialogue method of roleplay than, I think, any half-dozen sessions with different traditional RPGs. Freed from the constraint of having to inhabit her character the whole time, my wife could think more about Shawna's story, and I also found it engaging.
The game goes back and forth like that. We figured out that Yale worked two jobs: at night on the rope at a dance club and during the day for one of those companies that hauls dumpster trash. He trained hard, but the old Puerto Rican guy who coached him felt Yale was a slugger and not strong enough on the technical side. Yale feared his girlfriend was slipping drinks on the sly. One night at the club, Yale tried to show up a would-be boxing opponent by delaying the guy when he was obviously on the VIP list; Yale's boss reamed him out over that.
Meanwhile, Shawna trained with a homemade "gym" behind her apartment. Despite her best hopes for her brother, she managed to embarrass him in front of some bigger kids from his school, kids that were probably mixed up with gangs. She managed to grab a spot at the bottom of a fight card when another fighter got sick. With luck, she'd be on her way.
We finished off the session with two fights. First Yale went up against a gym rival, a Latino guy with better ring skills and, it seemed, more potential to go placed. The fight was short, but Yale was made to look like a fool, lumbering around the ring getting peppered with the other guy's fists. It was only in the last round -- it was just a four-round undercard bout -- did Yale go off, battering his opponent to win a bloody KO. Sure, he won the fight, but he lived down to his coach's expectations.
Shawna's fight was a little more upbeat. My wife showed some real strategy, wearing down her opponent from the start. There was no spectacular KO, but Shawna won on points, and the nobody fighter managed to score some positive rep, not to mention much-needed prize money.
As you can see, a lot happened in just a couple of hours of play, both in terms of action and character development. Part of this is due to Contenders' story-driven structure, which keeps players from wandering off course, but it's also thanks to the laid-back roleplaying style we employed. Half the time scenes were constructed from suggestions we made for each other, so even though it might have been my "turn," or her "turn," we were always involved.
We're only halfway there, of course. Contenders has a built-in fuse of sorts, so the game can't go on forever. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and I think the missus did, too. She's willing to see how things end up, so that's a positive; if she didn't care for the game, we'd never play it again, unfinished stories or not.
Joe, the wife and I enjoyed the game thoroughly and a little while after posting this I bought the full version of the game.
Let this be a lesson in marketing, as well: having a playable, free version of a solid game available is a great way to sell people on a premium variation.