Let me first say that the fight was great fun. Rolling the dice and reading the results becomes intuitive after just a round or two. There are some added options, like Grandstanding, where you don't get to roll storm dice but all your thunder dice net you two lightning tokens per success (and failed ones are discarded), and you can bring in special moves and relics with various powers. Our descriptions were quite over the top, in a good sort of way. The Second Coming of Christ struck out with the light and judgment of God (and a hammer). The violinist was baked into a husk of earth, died, came back to life, and burst out with a vengeance. Jackson kept pummeling the poor Dragon with Death From Above and slit open its face, and my character used that opportunity to tear out half its jawbone and bash its head in with it.

The main thing I noticed about the rules is that your narration has no impact on your effectiveness, but it can impact the kind of effect you cause. So you want to cover your bases with your descriptions, but there's no mechanical need to make them especially creative, awesome, or tactical. The reason we did that anyway lies in part in the character creation: we made these total badass characters, and we'll be damned if they don't show off during a battle. The other part is that we as a group supported it with the typical social rewards of yelling, laughing, and applauding. So there obviously are various ways to promote that kind of input. This makes it fundamentally different from Beast Hunters; at the same time, there are many more tactical options to allow Stepping Up on the mechanical level.

While players cannot combine actions, they can hand each other lightning tokens, and they get a bonus token if they pass on 3 or more. That's crucial, I think, to making this work as a group game, along with creating conditions for each other to use. Initially I was wishing for more ability to work together, but conditions are probably flexible enough in the long run to simluate various sorts of group maneuvers. You might just want to think about a third level of condition (or maybe one that lowers damage costs to 5 against a particular enemy or something) to broaden that existing mechanic a bit.

The one thing I suggested right after the game was that you might want to require myths to use all of their traits once before they use one a second time. That's because they're rated higher and lower, but contrary to PCs (who gain mythic power from using each trait once), there's no incentive to use the lower-rated ones. You might say that a GM would do that anyway for flavor, but in an outright players-vs-GM game like this, if I was the GM, I would like to be able to play to the fullest without being tempted to go with lower traits to give players a break. It would be easier for me as a GM to cycle through all of them rather than having to consider whether to be harder or softer on the players through my use of traits with higher or lower ratings.

Oh, here's a thought: if you did this, hinderance could allow characters to check off any trait of an enemy, so that the enemy has to use the lower-rated ones all over again before getting back to the higher one. In the fiction, you'd temporarily block the Dragon's breath or whatnot.

We didn't get a chance to play our characters outside of a conflict. And I'm not sure we'd do much of that anyway. The fun in Mythender is in epic battles between legends of different worlds, and I wouldn't mind focusing on that. Still, it might need some longer-running playtesting to see how that plays out. It does have several things to support longer games, including the gaining and improving of special moves and relics and the mortality track.

Ryan, I think this thing is pretty damn solid right now. Thanks for running it, and I'm looking forward to seeing it all polished and dressed up :)

Thank you so much, Christian. Poke me if I don't do up an Anima Prime one by tomorrow.

So, the really fucking cool that about running two playtests at a con is the ability to rewrite elements based on one and immediately try it again -- "playstorming" I believe is the term. Here's what I changed for the Sunday morning game:

The one thing I suggested right after the game was that you might want to require myths to use all of their traits once before they use one a second time. That's because they're rated higher and lower, but contrary to PCs (who gain mythic power from using each trait once), there's no incentive to use the lower-rated ones.

Right. I used it because it's cool to change up your stuff, but yeah, GMs need a reason to not just hit hard every time. Well, there's a rule that I don't think I stated (or needed to state) which needs a better title, but it's currently the "Rule of Not Repeating Shit." If you do something that's essentially the same as a previous panel, with no attempt to vary, then the other side as already seen it coming, and you lose one success in both pools. This goes equally for everyone, so the GM is encouraged to keep things different. (Which does mean there is a little bit where your narration affects the immediate mechanics rather than future mechanical choices, but not much -- which I like. I'm a fan of a lighter hand in that department, I've found.)

But I don't want Myths to regenerate Mythic Power like the Mythenders can. So, for Sunday morning, I made a "check off all the traits, and when it's cashed in, the Myth rolls looking for 3+ on the dice instead of 4+ for that roll." We'll see how that works, but it seemed to work well then.

Oh, here's a thought: if you did this, hinderance could allow characters to check off any trait of an enemy, so that the enemy has to use the lower-rated ones all over again before getting back to the higher one. In the fiction, you'd temporarily block the Dragon's breath or whatnot.

I'll have to try that. But given how uninteresting Hindrances were, here's what I changed: You don't raise their success TN on the dice, you actually hinder someone's ability to use a Mythic Power-using Battle Ability. Remember how the Dragon kept spending MP to take an extra turn, interrupting you guys? How would you like to stop that?

This ended up solving the game's biggest problem: unless the GM handwaves something (which I did in the Saturday night game, as an attempt to implement a rule idea), the battle surges on until the Myth is out of Mythic Power. But it's a beat-fest, totally tyranny of the victor, once its Thunder dice are reduces and it can't generate Lightning to do anything worth a damn, but isn't dead. Since "Not Dying" is a Mythic Power-using Battle Ability, it finally gave me a way to hand the players the Myth's own doom. It worked well Sunday morning.

And what's slotted to be changed:

While players cannot combine actions, they can hand each other lightning tokens, and they get a bonus token if they pass on 3 or more. That's crucial, I think, to making this work as a group game, along with creating conditions for each other to use. Initially I was wishing for more ability to work together, but conditions are probably flexible enough in the long run to simluate various sorts of group maneuvers. You might just want to think about a third level of condition (or maybe one that lowers damage costs to 5 against a particular enemy or something) to broaden that existing mechanic a bit.

The Sunday morning group also asked for more ways to work together. That's high on the list, though as I spoke with Albert, finding places where working together is mechanically interesting. The lightning share bit came from the first time that was asked for.

[continued...]

Mythender Characters from Saturday Night

Christian as Korek

Name: Korek
Ambition: I will be the most remembered

Traits [Rating]:
- I am terror [3] (Minion Trait)
- I have slain my entire tribe [1]
- I am known ever my the myths [2]
- I am a wrestler of myths [3]
- I am the bringer of winter [2] (Supernatural)

Convictions:
- I must break their courage
- I must kill heather priests

Signature Moves [Rating/Uses]:
- I tear open their jugular [3/1]
- Ripping out their bones [2/1]

Personal Mantle:
- Hearts race and, if I love them, explode
- Bones ache to be torn out by me
- Birds of darkness circle around me
- Rivers freeze over

Mortality: 2 out of 15 lost (due to Supernatural Trait rating)
Battle Damage: [3] [3] [4] [5]

First Relic: Sophia's Cross
Origin: Christian / Level: 3
Description: Silver, tiny, bright
Battle Effect: [Reaction] Ignore rolling when damaged, cost: 2 Mythic Power

Second Relic: Giant Dragonbone Sword
Origin: Pagan / Level: 1
The rest of it wasn't fleshed out

---

Brendan as Mariette

Name: Mariette
Ambition: I will bring about the second coming

Traits [Rating]:
- I am the first from the brow of the son of Man. [2]
- I am the hammer of God. [4]
- I am the heard of he Apocalypse. [1]
- I will judge you in the sight of the Lord. [1]
- I will not touch the earth again until it is made pure. [3] (Supernatural)

Convictions:
- Those I cannot baptize, I will crucify.
- I will not suffer an idol to stand.

Signature Moves [Rating/Uses]:
- Call light and lightning upon the impure [2/1]
Note: character is owed a new Signature Move and to increase the Rating or Use on the original one.

Personal Mantle:
- My feet no longer touch the earth
- The earth cannot touch me.
- My shadow always carries a hammer
- Around me dances a field of sparks
- The sight of me can blind the impure

Mortality: 4 out of 15 lost (due to Supernatural Trait rating & one lost due to Grandstanding)
Battle Damage: [3] [4] [5]

First Relic: The Hammer of Calvary
Origin: Christian / Level: 3
Description: A great bronze head and a handle as long as I am tall, blackened by a thousand hands.
Battle Effect: [Action] Increase the target number for damage by 1, cost: 1 Mythic Power

Second Relic: Orbiting chunks of earth
Origin: Pagan / Level: 1
The rest of it wasn't fleshed out

[continued...]

You know, this game looks like it will be able to handle some EPIC level superhero stuff...

Am I hacking it already?

Posted By: jessecoombsYou know, this game looks like it will be able to handle some EPIC level superhero stuff...

Am I hacking it already?

No need to hack! We've had people dive through dragons, survive within a serpent's mouth while it was filling with venom, blow said serpent up with lightning, knock an ice giant into a canyon, fly, knock a peon to his knees with the wind, get resurrected, etc. This is the game of epic-level superhero-ness. When explaining it to others, I comment that in this game you play Beowulf, you play Odysseus; it's that grandiose.

--Nancy

(as an aside, i think jesse was talking about EPIC [tm], the third tier of d&d 4e, after Heroic [tm] and Paragon [tm]; not just "epic". since you've totally bypassed 4e to play mythender, it makes sense, Nancy, that you wouldn't care about its terms... and furthermore seek to hunt down those terms and slay them where they dwell, deep in the hills of Mythic Norden.)

OMG i totally want to End 4e. why didn't i think of this earlier?

this morning i had like a half-dream about my mythender character, Vasili (which Christian reached across the table and added "dragonslayer" to, after i decapitated the specimen at our disposal. heh. totally rad.) in a villiage. in this half-dream our band of MythEnders comes into town and gathers things they feel they will need. mostly this is information. then there was a scene with just my character and this villiage boy, who is taking aim at vasili with a bow and arrow. the boy lets fly, the arrow strikes vasili in the neck and he falls down, stumbling into the snow. the boy walks closer and kaeloch, the faerie who is trapped within the sword begins getting agitated and shouting all sorts of things in her language, the boy thinks these are warnings for the MythEnder, of course kaeloch is trying to protect the boy. Vasili speaks to him without moving, his voice eminating from the land, and then stands-and-grabs-the-boys-leg in one motion, suspending him upside down. the boy reveals that he isn't operating on someone else's behalf, he just hates powerful people coming into and disrespecting his villiage. in the dream, vasili is about to kill the boy whom upon closer inspection is a girl, then decides against it. he marks her forhead with his name and tells her that he shall return for her in a dozen years or so, then tosses her into the snow. there are many other harsh words exchanged. (to be clear, i see this as a frank miller-esque sort of comic character, with all the pointless sexism and violence that accompanies. i imagine that there are uncomfortable sexually-charged moments with this captive child which feed the anti-hero vision i have for Vasili.) after vasili exits, the girl says something that insinuates that she'll be training her ass off for the next twelve years and be ready for him when he returns, He, this mythical man who has come to her villiage. and a new MythEnder is born!

so, i think it would be fun if each ME had an opportunity to evidence themselves to the other players, though NOT the other mythenders. this game is like Perfect insomuch as i think it works better with minimal character-to-character interaction. like, brendan's character and my character would have hated each other. actually, the only two whom i could see working together and liking each other were brendan's and joe's. though christian and i were both barbaric (total games that weekend i played feat. christian barbarians: 2/6) we'd still try to rip out each other's throats. so let's not.

yeah, so it would be cool to have a scene with the mythenders arriving in a town, and what some of the townfolk reactions are. this could give the GM a chance to set up what the town is like, and then the players can maybe throw in details too. this is also a great inspiration for the players for their own scenes.
then we'd have a series of short scenes like the one above, mostly monologing with other players tossing stuff in... or it might be nice just to sit back and watch what other folks have made up. this is just to see who these monsters are a little, showing how totally hardcore they are by standing them rightr next to simple, normal folks just trying to get by in mythic norden.
then there'd be a scene with the MEs leaving, and the villiage behind them, maybe the GM could provide snippits of conversation that the players as audience (or the reader of the comic book) would be privvy to, normal people talking about the legends they've just interacted with. i mean, maybe there would be pillars of smoke from the buildings that had been set ablaze (i've got to protect people fron the cold, right?), just showing the changes that the MEs had enacted upon the townsfolk's lives.

to me, that would crank the awesome. so to speak.
i would like there to be some little mechanical thing too, maybe one of three or five options that a player could seek to get from a scene. then we could pull a feather from bliss stage's cap and have the other players who watched the scene decide what they saw and the player gets that bonus.
or whatever. the other player's judgement thing isn't really neccesary.

more later, "breakfast" time. (how do i sleep in so late?)

Posted By: Logos7totally sold, any idea when others besides friends of the publisher can get ahold of the fiend slayhing action

I'll post up playtest docs once it's not all in my head. I'll mention in on my podcast & blog, and probably mention it here too.

Just to clarify, I'm not touching or referring to 4ed. Mythender looks to be miles of awesome, and it seems to be accomplishing the FEEL of world-shattering heros that I wish a superhero game had.

The character creation alone was a blast, and it's fun to keep thinking bigger...Bigger...BIGGER!

Jackson, ping me if I haven't answered you by tomorrow or so. My silence isn't "I'm ignoring that" but "I'm thinking about that, and have nothing more concrete to say than 'I'm thinking...'"

Posted By: AlanI find it wonderfully ironic that the Mythenders themselves have mythic qualities.

Exactly. And as they grow closer to becoming myths themselves, their mythic qualities increase. The fate of many mythenders is to become myth, and to be themselves ended by their friends or by the next group of mythenders to come by.

Posted By: jackson teguso, i think it would be fun if each ME had an opportunity to evidence themselves to the other players, though NOT the other mythenders. this game is likePerfectinsomuch as i think it works better with minimal character-to-character interaction. like, brendan's character and my character would have hated each other. actually, the only two whom i could see working together and liking each other were brendan's and joe's. though christian and i were both barbaric (total games that weekend i played feat. christian barbarians: 2/6) we'd still try to rip out each other's throats. so let's not.

yeah, so it would be cool to have a scene with the mythenders arriving in a town, and what some of the townfolk reactions are. this could give the GM a chance to set up what the town is like, and then the players can maybe throw in details too. this is also a great inspiration for the players for their own scenes.
then we'd have a series of short scenes like the one above, mostly monologing with other players tossing stuff in... or it might be nice just to sit back and watch what other folks have made up. this is just to see who these monsters are a little, showing how totally hardcore they are by standing them rightr next to simple, normal folks just trying to get by in mythic norden.
then there'd be a scene with the MEs leaving, and the villiage behind them, maybe the GM could provide snippits of conversation that the players as audience (or the reader of the comic book) would be privvy to, normal people talking about the legends they've just interacted with. i mean, maybe there would be pillars of smoke from the buildings that had been set ablaze (i've got to protect people fron the cold, right?), just showing the changes that the MEs had enacted upon the townsfolk's lives.

I think there's a dial here. Some folks will make mythenders who should totally be in each others scenes -- like, maybe a party of Templars who decide to quell some mythic ass. To keep with the comic book terminology, I'm looking to call them "exposition issues," where it's just about character interaction. You get a page or two (what we'd call a "scene") to play out a scene in a town. In each scene, you decide beforehand if it's involving a Trait to worth up mythic power, or if it's about being humble & mortal to regain Mortality. After playing at GPNW, I'm leaning towards something in the vein of PTA for these scenes, though without conflict rules.

I do love the idea of a page as the Mythenders leave, showing the aftermath of their encounter. I think that'll really sell the impact of the Mythenders coming into these people's lives. Actually, thinking about it, bookending that -- having one also beforehand which shows these lives before the Mythenders come in the picture -- could also be potent. But these wouldn't be systemic, necessary elements, just techniques that might be used by some folks, and might by used on occasion -- not every comic focuses on the NPCs of the world so much.

I think I've also seen how to do a "perilous journey" spread -- have the players go around a round or two in battle before the Myth shows up. That'll have a different feel that "suddenly myth here!" Again, not for use all the time, but a neat way to change things up and make different issues feel unique in a campaign (which needs its own comic term).

True. Though, I think that could be part of the point, making the journey feel different from a battle that starts out without one. I'd probably give the myth some Thunder dice along side, and your rolls during the journey maybe couldn't build up Lightning.