Hi Ping,

This was a great game and a very pleasant surprise. As our last game slot of a long day, we all agreed we were worn out and would take it easy, but the awesome kept on accumulating like an avalanche and our weariness just fell away.

One correction: Dr. Owen Fields (Joaquin Phoenix) was the third survivor, not the mechanic. This despite the fact that he accumulated two conditions very early on. My exuberant use of quasi-science terms and great scenes with Matthew's Mr. Filman somehow kept Owen alive to the finish.

The disk-shaped space station map came together in a way that was easy to use and evocative. Hitting our trailer and secrets so well was icing on the cake.

Thanks again for facilitating this Ping.

Awesome. Thanks for facilitating and writing it up, Ping. I'm glad everyone had such a great time.

It's interesting to me that you used the Alpha draft rather than the Beta (is that true?), though I know Ben Robbins has also made noises about liking some aspects of the original draft better. But I suppose the rules aren't dramatically different (aside from a few new Conditions and, as you say, the keyword guidelines for Secrets/Goals) and the Alpha draft is a very simple, condensed version in comparison.

In any case, I'm definitely excited to play some Geiger when I get out to Seattle in Aug-Sept, both because you've been so supportive of the game and because I wanna see all the little ways that you run it better than I do :)

Posted By: Jonathan Waltonthough I know Ben Robbins has also made noises about liking some aspects of the original draft better

Yeah, I think Beta went too much in the direction of traditional character ownership -- we talked about this some on an old thread. Listing a bunch of character concepts as a group (with lots more characters than players), then picking survivors, then picking who will play those characters (Alpha-style) promotes a very different attitude than sitting down and making "my guy" (Beta-style). That influences the whole rest of the game. I think it's a critical part of the Geiger Counter magic.

When you get to Seattle we'll all drink vast quantities of coffee and talk about Geiger Counter long into the night. And then you'll finish it.

Yeah. this was a total blast, and really played well. I very much liked the "What kind of movie/what kinds of stereotypes/who would play them" flow.

James

Yeah, prep time is definitely something I've been working on cutting down with each edition, but it requires almost as much as Primetime Adventures, say, and then is meant for running one-shots, which is an interesting space to work in.

What's also interesting is that I wrote the two editions, Alpha and Beta, at very different times in my life and play history (I'd played the game 3 times for Alpha, and 12+ for Beta), but I don't really consider them to be different games so much as different explanations of the same family of techniques and practices. So it's really interesting, then, that one edition seems to emphasize certain aspects while another edition emphasizes others. I don't know if the way I ran it changed (because it's slightly different each time, right?) or if I just explained it differently or what.

Partially for this reason, I've been considering just writing Gamma as one giant example of play, to show people how to play the game instead of telling them, but it would have to be a really good example for it to be worth reading all the way through, almost like a good novel or movie script, and I'm nervous that I might not be up to it. Then again, the great thing about Geiger having multiple editions -- and not being released commercially in print until I'm fully satisfied with it -- is that I could write and release an edition (as I did with Beta) and just see what folks think of it and how helpful the text is when trying to run the game.

But yes, we should definitely all sit around and some point and talk about what the essentials of the game are and how best to convey them in a text to people.

Posted By: Jonathan WaltonI've been considering just writing Gamma as one giant example of play, to show people how to play the game instead of telling them

My gut reaction is that this is not a good idea, having just recently facilitated the game completely spontaneously without reading the rules for a year. I read the steps out loud as we did them and I thought the procedural Step 1: Do X, Step 2: Do Y was a big part of why the game was so smooth. I'm curious what Eric, Matthew and James who (as far as I know) had never read the rules thought about the game set-up being very procedural.

If we had to interpret the rules from a play example, it would not only take longer (and the idea is that this is supposed to be a spontaneous one-shot), but I'm not convinced it would be clearer EDIT: and the core rules would not function as a reference which is one of its primary jobs. I think people want to be told how to play. They will always do whatever they're gonna do, but at the onset, they need to be told without ambiguity how to play the game out of the box. I have thoughts about how the procedures might be clarified or re-arranged, but I think you should keep it as you have it in Alpha.

Rules written like board game = good.

Ping, the 'very procedural' thing worked, and well. Jonathan, unless your target market is not the indie game crowd or the broader gaming community, write it like a board game. Everyone you are marketing the game to has an awareness of how to deal with boardgames that blur into RPGs during play.

James

Posted By: Alanthe rules should give very clear answers about what to do when.

I agree with you folks that a procedural text would be great. Geiger Counter just has rules like:

-- if the characters are winning to easily, do ABC things that'll kill some of them off
-- if the monster is winning too easily, do XYZ to try to even things out

It can be described in procedural terms, but making it work successfully depends on more than following procedures, which can be tough to get across in a procedural text without something like Vincent's, "You see what I did there? This happened and so I did this..." that he does in Dogs. But I'll give it another shot and see what happens.