Tim, myself, Brendan, and Sabe gathered to play Acts of Evil. Tim ran. We had some skepticism and confusion regarding the rules, but were able to get into it and had a pretty good time. Our setting was 800 BC India, sort of a "Bollywood IAWA." We did no research but instead relied upon our offensive western stereotypes. Good times. (All the players were in the same Terrense.)
Anyway, I have a few minor points, but my biggest one is that the presentation and clarity of the game must improve. We had a difficult time interpreting, learning, and referencing the game. Tim and I had both read it multiple times and had played in an earlier version, but still had trouble. It seems as if the text is deliberately more complicated than it needs to be. While flavorful for the concept of occultation, this makes learning the game un-fun. This is an area where the game needs major improvement.
Some random observations:
We didn't seem like there was much of a decision to be made during bidding for Terrenses, since no baseline bids were suggested, and it's completely dependent on what other people bid. We grabbed some random dice (2-3 each), and as it turned out, there was only one Terrense. That was pretty cool though, since we were all present in the same story. Maybe the game should only start out with one Terrense (unless there are lots of players.)
Only two NPCs were ever created: a teacher, the old hermit, and a village, represented as a single NPC. There doesn't seem much of a reason for the GM to ever create new NPCs.
What kind of behavior do you want the GM to engage in? How are you rewarding this? You seem to have the intended player behaviors down, and a reward system is in place, but the GM seems to have a blank slate.
We just used one type of power. I explained the split power later, and everyone universally thought being able to take other's power was a bad idea.
I ran into Iniquity very early- like in the first three turns. I was going for power from Nobodies, and was on my third roll- I would be rolling five dice, they four, so I gave them an Agency of 2 to split them into two pools of two each. I rolled no primes, and ended up losing all my Clarity. A pretty cool resolution to the town happened- we sympathized with the poor villages who had all these crazy occultists abusing them and demanding tribute, and when they finally god fed up with it and rebelled against my character, it was cool. But the fallout for my character? Wicked crazy, and there doesn't seem to be any way to get out of it.
Are Underlings useful for anything other than getting more Underlings?
My name is spelled wrong under the playtesters section. It's Willow Palecek.
Just some thoughts. Acts of Evil is a cool premise, and we're all looking forward to it coming together.
I have recently realized that the game needs a different voice and to be conveyed via much more lucid writing. (Between you and me, I plan to take my cues from chapter six of Spione. It's an almost shockingly plain and transparent explanation of how to play. I had no idea Ron was capable of such a transparent text. Such direct and accessible writing is quite a challenge.)
I don't think the text of the ashcan is a failing though, but rather, a necessary stage. I'm three sessions into an Acts of Evil playtest with my wife Danielle, Thor Hansen (who posts on Story Games as Thor), and George Hammond (who isn't particularly active online, but who did some monsters for the somewhat recent Guardians of Order Tekumel game), and the pieces are really falling together. (It's the first time I've run the game since last year in May, and it's the first time I can honestly say that I'm enjoying it as a gaming experience.) And what I've realized I achieved with the ashcan (text and physical object) was to inspire players with a vision for the game that I hadn't quite accomplished mechanically, and now everything is falling into place and answers to issues that arise in play come easily and naturally, because the current players, and readers and playtesters who got the vision from the ashcan have been teaching me how the game needs to work. I'm rather convinced this wouldn't have happened without the flavor injected ashcan.
And so now I'm in the position of being able to write great GM advice. (In particular, great advice on NPC creation and handling, and greatly improved alternative advice on prep.)
I'm not surprised the Concours of Terrenes fell flat for you. Carl Congdon's suggested alternate Concours of Terrenes (from the thread lower in these forums) is a big improvement. (Clearly, what I need to do soon though is a full, plainly written, rules summary for folks who are planning to playtest in the next couple of months. The pieces are really falling into place lately, and so the next few independent playtests will be more about validation and nuances and accounting for uncommon mechanical circumstances than about the mechanics of achieving my design goals.)
Underlings help you lower your Resistance, and a zero Resistance is a big advantage. And they function like Clarity when you're in Iniquity.
I'm torn on the Feracious and Pernicious Power rules. I confess that I'm not using them in the current playtest myself. I'm not crazy about the additional mechanical complexity they represent, and about the adding of tokens to the game. And the way I'm framing scenes and handling NPCs has somewhat mitigated the issue of players not being particularly interested in each other's scenes. Which is what I was working to address with the Feracious and Pernicious rules. But I'd like to see them playtested. Some of the player engagement with my current playtest has to be from the electric sense of seeing the design coming together. And you benefited, I think, from all starting in the same Terrene. If you were strewn across separate Terrenes, would NPCs that were a bit more palpably pregnant with potential protagonism (say that three times fast) have been enough to keep you interested in each other's scenes?
I'll make sure your name is spelled right in the final game.
"If you were strewn across separate Terrenes, would NPCs that were a bit more palpably pregnant with potential protagonism (say that three times fast) have been enough to keep you interested in each other's scenes?"
No, I doubt it.
It's too bad you can't make it to FMW this year. We would have had a good face to face discussion.
I want to run AoA a lot more, but now I'm hesitating in lieu of a rules summary and more specific GM advice. How soon can you have that finished? :)