Well, we played Geiger Counter at the weekend, and had a blast. Thanks to everyone that helped out with suggestions. I have the map and will try and get pictures as soon as I can get my broken camera working. Also, will attempt a write-up as soon as I can get my broken brain working.

We ended up with "Collider", a B-movie with an A-budget, about an outbreak of nanotech zombies in the empty shell of the Large Hadron Collider in 2035. Personal highlight: my sleazy project administrator ended up exploding when he got thrown into some high tech machinery clutching the case of C4 he had mistaken for his briefcase, which entertained me no end (and spoiled a few zombies days). There were a few places where it looked like the survivors would have it easy, and maybe even most of them would survive, and then it swung the other way with the menace looking like it would take everyone out, but we ended up with 2 survivors getting their goals at the same time while getting out of the complex, and dropping the menace to nearly nothing. We then left the fate of the last survivor up to a final dice-off with the remnants of the menace.

A few notes (bearing in mind that I haven't read the rules since playing and didn't get much chance to look at them while playing due to having too much fun, so I may have missed some things):

• We ended up with the 2 insertion team operatives dying first, and together, due to the fact that they ended up rolling badly and losing every conflict with the menace, and not getting as far as a chance to split up when their opposing goals became relevant. Some way of stopping characters which appear together dying together if they don't get around to splitting up might be useful, maybe sacrificing one characters survival dice to give the other a chance to carry on?
  
• The 2 ninjas operatives mentioned above also saw the worst of the menace as they headed straight for where the areas where the menace was whereas some other characters were all the way at the other end of the complex and didn't see the menace 'till they spread further. I think this was my fault for forgetting what I'd realised thinking about movies like Jurassic Park, where the environment and other factors (in this case the increasingly messed up security lockdown) should also be considered to be part of the menace (not just, 'there's zombies', but 'you're trapped in here, everything's malfunctioning, and there's zombies') and cause conflicts.
  
• We had some issues with pacing, specifically in that when the operatives died just after the menace reached 8 dice, some people thought this was too early (8 dice means the menace is fully revealed) and some people were worried that no-one had died before that (8 dice means that the menace is at it's most threatening and has probably already taken out some of the main characters). This will probably be better in further games with this group now we've seen the pacing in action, but seems like it could be a common first-game issue.
  
• One of the players noted that there is still a penalty for dying, separate from losing your 'character' which most people weren't that bothered about, in that you will be heavily involved in less scenes. While you will still be directing scenes and making suggestions during other peoples, everyone with alive survivors will have that and playing their survivors in the scenes they appear in.
  
• Another player noted the large amount of cross-table talk, with people interjecting suggestions and then having several separate discussions about those suggestions while the director was trying to move the scene on. It didn't cause too many problems but we may need to look at putting something in place to deal with that, especially if we have more limited time than we had available for this session.
  
• Finally, I found myself holding off on using resource dice I had picked up due to the moments not being dramatic enough. This was just before the menace really started hammering us and I was feeling guilty about possibly spoiling the game by playing to the story rather than the mechanic. Should I have used the dice in earlier scenes or was holding them like that an approved action?

Bit slow in replying here, am suffering from a virus attack (hopefully not one that turns me into a nanotech zombie) which is also delaying an attempt at a write-up.

Posted By: Ben RobbinsWhat rule set did you wind up using? Straight version beta or version alpha + beta?

Mostly beta, though we created a bunch more characters than we had players and then assigned them based on which ones people wanted and which ones suggested interesting goals.

See the "sacrificial lamb" idea from the second post of this thread. The downside is that as written you'd have to declare ahead of time. Of course if you have two guys in the scene and both have two conditions and the menace has lots of dice... well you know what's going to happen.

I was thinking maybe some sort of 'go on without me' action, sacrificing the survival dice one death would generate to allow the other to survive an extra condition. They'd still take a condition from losing but wouldn't be taken out. Of course, this would need to be limited to once per person, at least, and maybe once per game or some other condition to stop it happening all the time.

It's true: if you get framed into scenes with the menace more than anyone else, you die first.

That's one mistake I've seen in multiple Geiger Counter games: getting too focused on particular characters early and putting them in harm's way without realizing it will doom them. You need to keep the camera moving around, which should happen automatically if you follow the rule of not framing your own character into scenes (if two people are together, they shouldn't appear when either of their players are the GM).

I think it was more that there were only conflicts where those characters were, everyone else was 'safe' at the other end of the complex where the menace hadn't spread to yet. Definitely need to ensure conflict is going on everywhere to avoid some players getting hammered early on.

The pacing really isn't that rigid. That are lots of permutations that work, with early deaths, late deaths, depending on the type of story you're doing. It's really the rotating GMs who control this, because they can pick and choose which characters to hit with the menace -- they know exactly how many conditions people have, how many dice they'll be rolling, etc. I usually only mention the "attack before 8 dice" when people think the menace is too easy because the menace has immunity then.

Also remember that "fully revealed" really means fully revealed to the audience (meaning the players), not necessarily the characters.

Makes sense, I think the issue was that we all had expectations as to what the pacing was, and hadn't discussed them like we'd discussed genre and style and so on. We'll know to discuss it (or at least know it's an area to watch out for) next time.

Did you use the version 1 method of making non-survivors as well? We let players with dead survivors take over those roles, or (sometimes) promote a non-survivor if it fits the story.

As mentioned above, we created more characters than needed, but the problem was that we didn't really pay enough attention to them when we started playing, so they ended up either getting killed off early on or forgotten about. For example, there were a bunch of generic scientists hanging around in the labs, but most of them got killed off as a way of separating some survivors from the current director's survivor.

That sounds like everyone was just excited about the game. But yeah, it can take relearning some discipline if you haven't played as many rotating authority games.

Main issue there was the several points where the director couldn't make himself heard, so there needs to be at least some pretence of paying attention next time. Maybe a Director's Hammer to bang when he wants to move things on?

Hey, playing to the story should never hurt the game, right? ;)

Technically you should be rolling all the dice you have, all the time. If you picked up a gun (1 die advantage), you should always be rolling 3 dice. But I totally approve of not using dice if you think it helps the story or you think the dice aren't appropriate (why would a gun help me against a nanobot?).

It was more that I didn't want to reveal what the dice was yet, as the character didn't yet know he'd accidentally gotten the wrong briefcase and wasn't actually using it in any way. Maybe I should have been rolling the dice anyway, despite not actually using it in any way? Or is that abstracting the mechanics too far from the events?

P.S. Can I just say thanks for mentioning Geiger Counter on Lame Mage, as I'd probably have never come across it otherwise, and that would have been a shame.

Thanks Jonathan, and don't worry about not scanning the boards every second for a Geiger Counter thread, I still haven't got around to doing a write-up and it's nearly 2 weeks later. I have (low quality) pictures of the map now, if I can remember how to access my web space.

In response to your suggestions:
With pacing, yes suggestions would be useful, though I have no idea what I'd suggest myself. With the experience of this game I think we'd do better on the next one, but I'm not sure we'd be able to explain exactly why. If I think of anything I'll be sure and let you know.
The action dice in question was semi-defined (it was a briefcase full of cool ninja weaponry and explosives) but the character wasn't aware what it was and probably wouldn't have known how to use it. I think in future I need to define them as something the character would use regularly, as opposed to what seems coolest.
The location of the menace was, I think, a combination of setup and pacing mistakes. The setup was that the menace was confined in the one area which it broke out of at the start, and we then had scenes taking place simultaneously and with very brief intervals so not a lot of time passed per scene, meaning that the menace could not logically spread out. I think including environmental obstacles as part of the menace (as I mentioned), and giving more time for localised menaces to spread out by having longer scenes and 'spaces' between scenes, or having some way for them to spread more quickly would both help.

Just to reiterate, we all loved the game. Even my girlfriend, who hates the idea of narrating and was tempted to duck out when the game was explained. With any luck we'll play again soon and I'll have even more comments to make...