(Crossposted at The Collective Endeavour)

Covenant, by Matt Machell, is one of those games that I have demoed at a few cons, read, been enthused by, played all to rarely, but never actually run a full game of. I felt this to be remiss, not just because I feel that Covenant is an under-appreciated piece of work, appearing at the same time in 2006 as more famous and lauded Contenders and Best Friends (both also excellent games in their own right). One of my aims during my time in New Zealand was to run Covenant at least once and during this Christmas holiday season, I had the ideal chance at Post Box Con, organised by Steve Hickey. An informal event of gaming and chat just after Christmas, it proved to provide two excellent (but radically different) game experiences. One was 'The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries', and the other was the subject of this AP, Covenant.

The concept behind the game can be a bit of a hard sell at times. The idea of a global conspiracy that got it wrong, mistimed it's imagined apocalypse and is now being torn apart by recrimination, factional struggles and self-interest is engaging for me, but strangely difficult to get across exactly why it is so good. Nonetheless, Morgan Davie, Steven Hickey, Blair Rhodes and Paul Wilson, were all keen to play after my initial pitch.

Perhaps the most challenging part of the initial preparation process was the creation of Conventions for the cell and, rather interestingly, the original purpose of the cell. Working out what the original purpose was had to be set aside and returned to after working out other things, and even then it proved relatively challenging. There is a fine line in the game that you have to be carefully about: many of the suggestions for the purpose were far to task specific in a very defined, narrow way. We eventually got round the problem and the cell looked like this:

Name: The Guild of the Signal
Location: Wellington, New Zealand

Conventions
Always refer to the sacred texts
No society member will reveal the conspiracy
There are invisible entities
Every member must be married
Strict hierarchy

Motifs
Charts written in blood
Conversations on high ground
Isolated living spaces
Winding hillside roads
Deep waters

Former Purpose
To guide the invisible entities into contact

Important People
The helicopter pilot - moves the cell swiftly about the region
The guildmaster - head of the conspiracy in Wellington
The librarian - keeps of the texts and archives of knowledge

As we had decided to make the location the city we were actually in, it made creating the motifs extremely easy. Most of them were easily identifiable characteristics of Wellington (the deep water of the harbour, the high ground of Mount Victoria, Mount Cook and the other hills, the winding roads that snake through the city). The familiarity of location also made setting the place of scenes really easy: no lengthy descriptions that took up time, everyone knew what the places were like and the familiarity, juxtaposed with the strangeness gave a pleasing air.

The characters were then created and people seemed to find this a fairly intuitive process once the initial ideas were thrashed out. It was certainly commented on that the way the characters are created sets up a huge number of story elements right there and then. Everything on the sheet can be brought into the game somehow to give added spice, conflict and drama. Did we know when we were creating character that the game would end up being all about dysfunctional relationships and the idea of marriage? Certainly that was touched on tangentially by one of the conventions, but it was until the game actually started and got rolling that these things came front and centre, becoming really powerful driving forces in the fiction.

In brief, the characters were:

Thomas Mowbray, an introverted astronomer, a man who really believed in the conspiracy but who also dedicated his life to science.

Baker, the taciturn fixer, an ex-army man with a decidedly skewed view of morality and with no eye towards the long view.

Nolan Kincaid, an arrogant chief executive, who has an immense belief in himself and a dim view of others and their susceptibility to money.

Ben Lyall, a sympathetic tramper (hillwalker) who works for the Department of Conservation and who has a strange belief that the invisible entities are actually real.

We took a break for food after creating the characters, which was very handy as it gave me time to detail a few NPCs who had grown out of the cell and character creation process. I initially sketched out The Guildmaster, Titus the librarian, the helicopter pilot (whom it turned out was the wife of Ben Lyall) and Linda, the deceitful wife of Thomas Mowbray. Looking at the character sheets, it became stunningly obvious that this game wasn't going to be about the conspiracy at all, in any meaningful sense, but totally about how these people related, the power struggles, the relationships and the corrosive nature of what was happening between them.

Taking a cue from all of this stuff, the first scene took place on a windy Mount Victoria lookout at 3am. Kincaid and Baker (who had relationships established through the crucibel on the character sheets) were taking photographs of Linda Mowbray having sex in a car with her latest boyfriend (both Kincaid and Baker had a joint order of having to end all the mariages within the cell, contrary to the established convention). This was the first use of the resolution mechanics in the game, so provided a learning platform from everyone else round the table, letting them see how the various elements on the character sheet allowed them to manipulate the outcomes of the resolution.

There followed the Guildmaster attempting to get rid of the cell members by violent means aboard his yacht, Lyall flying to an isolated lighthouse in an attempt to find the Librarian and being bested in a conflict by Russell, the newest member of the cell and an surprisingly mean NPC (who, through a glance through the door of the lighthouse as he and Lyall fought, showed that Lyall's wife, the pilot, had taken him briefly as a lover). Mowbray, shot in the gut because of the assassination attempt and being manipulated by his wife (he was still unaware of her infidelity) into trying to kill Titus the librarian. Bleeding from his gut wound, Mowbray stumbled through Wellington Airport, attempting to catch the fleeing, semi-crippled old librarian. He failed at the last and collapsed to the floor unconscious and bleeding everywhere. Paul had to leave at the this point, so it represented the ideal scene in which his character could bow out of the action.

It was only about half way through that the game kicked in to high gear and went from being satisfying to being outstanding. The scenes cranked up, the conflicts became really meaty and meaningful and everyone round the table was leaning in when they were going on, listening to the words being said and craning their necks to see what the dice would throw up. Kincaid was established as the true villain of the piece, a despicable man manipulating and using all those around him, especially Lyall and Baker.

Malcolm, I'm glad you're posting this. I was just looking at Covenant again last week; I feel it's a fantastic game that's missing about 10 pages. A good, long, solid example of play would have helped, and you AP partly fills this blank.

I can't believe I haven't heard or read about this game before. For me, its another undiscovered gem, much like when I ran Nine Worlds a couple of months ago. This one-shot of Covenant was one of my gaming highlights of the year.

Some reasons why it was so good:

-- The prep helps the game to find its feet quickly. By 'find its feet', I mean that the characters began generating their own plots based on what had happened in the game. Events quickly stopped being about the prep, and became about the conflicts that had emerged from play. This is primarily the result of the Crucible, a circle filled with information at the centre of the character sheet that simultaneously acts as a (I assume) Sorceror-inspired Kicker and Diagram. It makes the characters hit the ground running - but those initial plans do not survive contact with everybody else trying to achieve their agendas. You're forced to adapt to a chaotic situation.

-- I felt conflicts were easy to detect, and sequels (followup scenes) to those conflicts emerged naturally.

-- The game encourages strong portrayals of NPCs who you define through conflict (ala Dogs and 9W). Which I love.

-- The dice mechanic for resolving conflicts is fun! It gives you enough options (re-roll, add an extra d6, or remove your opponent's highest d6), while simultaneously reinforcing the fiction and maintaining the element of luck.

--- --- ---

As for my take on the difficulty of cell creation, I'd say it was because we were:

- a new group, learning to trust each other in the process of brainstorming (and doing it in front of an audience)
- trying to fill this blank slate of a setting, and coming into the game quite cold - being unfamiliar with the available options and implications of rules.
- And personally, I was a bit uncomfortable to start with, trying to figure out what you meant by conventions and motifs that were 'too specific'. For me, this stemmed from not being sure how these would be used in play.

Posted By: hix This one-shot of Covenant was one of my gaming highlights of the year.

Ah, that's made my day! Thanks!

It's great to see everyone really grabbing the concept and running with it. I think this is my favourite Covenant AP so far, as it really zones in on how the game is all about the cell's internal collapse and how that changes the characters. You've got some really nasty life changing moments in there, which is exactly how it should be. Well done all!

Side question for those who've read the book, I've noticed it's really easy to get distracted by the external pressures in the game, and I wonder if the book lacks enough advice on focusing on the internals of the cell? The scene framing advice should do this, but I wonder if it should be tweaked somewhat?

Cell creation wise. It is often iterative, and I've seen folks dither around for a while until they hit a combination and then everything just slots into place. It definitely benefits from an understanding of how play works before you start on it, and with con games that can be a disadvantage.

I think Wellington needs to be added to the Codex list of cities as you've got some great material there! "love is a comforting illusion" is an awesome truism to play with.

Posted By: AnemoneMalcolm, I'm glad you're posting this. I was just looking atCovenantagain last week; I feel it's a fantastic game that's missing about 10 pages. A good, long, solid example of play would have helped, and you AP partly fills this blank.

Hey Sophie, is the example of play on the website helpful, or are you looking for something more extensive? I'll work together one for the Codex (a Wiki for those who don't know), if you need a more comprehensive one.

Also anything else folks feel is missing or need clarification, now is the time to shout up as I'm preparing a slightly tweaked PDF version to include all the Errata (will be free to folks with the print version).

Posted By: hix
While playing it struck me that there is an apocalypse in this game - a psychological apocalypse inside the minds and lives of all the characters, triggered because the actual predicted apocalypse hasn't come to pass. Everything the cultists believed, everything they've lived for, has been shattered. They're all devastated, in shock, struggling to understand how much the world has changed (in the sense that it hasn't actually changed at all).

That pretty much sums up the game's core conceit. For character drama it's much more satisfying to play with than a "real", external apocalypse.