I sat down for a session of a game named "Black Cadillacs" shortly before Christmas with the game's creator, Darcy Burgess, and another friend. I'm not particularly experienced with RPGs (used to play D&D and Warhammer back in the day), so I was expecting a traditional game in which there was a clearly defined "mission" or objective which the gameplay revolved around and there were clear winners and losers (characters who died, got fewer experience points, etc.). Instead, the game seemed to be more of an exercise in collaborative storytelling, with the players and the "gamemaster" working together to create an engaging narrative.

As the game is war-based, we first decided what conflict we'd be playing within and settled upon the Vietnam War. Then we the players were asked to create our characters, who were not given stats (like hit points, etc.) but instead personalities and backgrounds that might be relevant during game play. Once we'd finished with our characters the gamemaster started play, which was turn-based...I can't remember all of the ins and outs of each turn (more on that below), but they were based on initiative and luck, rather than skill...whoever had more of those attributes had more power/ability to shape how the narrative proceded.

The bare bones of the situation was that our characters were a couple of low-level army guys working on a base in Saigon just as the city was in the process of being overrun. We witnessed a local boy we knew well being roughly interrogated by a couple other American soldiers, and decided to intervene. The boy's brother also came running over and got involved. Just as a full-blown fight was breaking out, the base was attacked by the Viet Cong and everyone was forced to scramble for cover, and one of the characters was seriously injured. Unfortunately, that's about as far as we got as our time was limited that evening.

The thing I found most interesting about the game was the non-confrontational relationship between the gm and the players...rather than trying to thwart the characters or make things as difficult as possible for them, it seemed like his focus was simply to make the experience interesting, with lots of narrative twists and turns. The main complaint I had about it was that it seemed to have a pretty steep learning curve, with lots of non-intuitive procedural points that had to be explained to us as we went along (and which I am hard pressed to remember at this point), which led to a bit of confusion and delay. I'd imagine that issue would resolve itself once you've played a couple of times.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: Andy</cite>Heya!

That sounds kinda cool. Was there a particular situation in game where you felt that? What was happening at that time?

What did you like about the character that you made?

Any notable moments in game, either in the story or between the players?

-Andy</blockquote>

Well, as we progressed through the game I just got a general sense that the gm was coming up with scenarios not because he regarded them as hoops we had to jump through or because they'd be as difficult as possible to survive, but because he wanted to see how we'd react and improvise to the changing situation. There wasn't a sense that he was trying to "beat" us or "win" the game or that we had to do the same to him. I enjoyed the interaction between my character and the other guy's...knowing his background and personality made him seem like more of a fleshed-out person than just a series of stats or a traditional alignment (good, evil, etc.).

As for my character, I sort of tried to make him as much like me as possible, personality-wise...just an ordinary guy caught up in extraordinary events, trying to ride out the war and keep himself in one piece. One thing I liked about the game was that the background and personality you gave your character were more important to the gameplay than randomly-determined categories ("Strength", "Intelligence", etc.), and you were rewarded for acting in ways that were in keeping with your character's past and personality.

Well, I wouldn't say I ever really felt like you were "throwing adversity" at us, in the sense that you were trying to get the best of us or kill us (in fact, I think you said the main characters more or less couldn't die)...not sure, exactly, how to answer that one.

Well, narrating adversity was interesting...I wouldn't say it worked "better" or "worse" than victory. Coming up with bad stuff that happens to your character was kind of a novel idea, especially since I didn't feel like I had to try to "win" the game. As for the spending, it sort of gave a basic framework to what you had to come up with, without tying you to anything specific.

The actual details are pretty fuzzy now, but as I remember it there were quite a few times where you had to stop play to explain what was going on, and/or why we had to roll dice, and/or what the coins meant, etc., and it was a little frustrating at times as it really slowed things down. As I said, a lot of that sort of thing would probably get smoothed out once you'd played a few times.