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« il: 2012-09-23 23:21:03 »
Sabato ho fatto una demo di Monsterhearts nella "mia" fumetteria. È andata orrendamente bene, mi sono divertito e ho trovato gente meravigliosa e ricettiva, è stata una soddisfazione enorme.
Su richiesta di varie persone ho scritto un resoconto su G+, che ora riporto anche qui sul forum.
È in inglese perché, onestamente, non ho una gran voglia di tradurlo :-P
This thing didn't started in the best way and I was not overtly optimistic.
I'm an habitué of that shop and the shopkeeper is an old friend of mine (I'm just one of those guys you can see wasting thier saturday morning leaning on a comic store desk) and it was literally enthusiatic by the concept of the game, but I didn't know the players, they were far from the indie world as ones gets and were even surprised when I told them that I hadn't a written "adventure".
There was also a little chaos at the beginning in individuating the players. Only one was "reserved", but we recruit another in five minutes and the shoopkeeper just handled the shop to his clerk and joined us.
Once seated I pitched the game: this is a game to tell together teen-drama stories with horror undertones, there isn't a prewritten quest so there aren't wrong choices and your carachters are basically immortal, so just try to play it with honesty, integrity and a little emotion.
Then I distribuited four skins on the table.This is a little trick I experimented with Apocalypse World demoes: usually I don't want new players with little time to browse through 10 or so booklets and I like to somehow steer them in a vague direction: for example I never put on the table the Angel and the Gunlugger. The classic party used to D&D would use them to replicate the cleric/warrior relationship, and I don't want this in a demo.I just put on the table [number of players] + 1 booklets.
Three of the four Monsterhearts selected skins were The Mortal, the Werewolf and the Vampire, because this is just the classic threesome in teen-horror (or just horror), from Buffy to Twilight.For the fourth I put down the Ghoul because someone, quickly browsing the material, said it was cool.
I made them read the flavour texts and after that I made them choose. As expected the Holy Trinity was not broken: Mortal, Vampire, Werewolf. It's just a too powerful imaginary, I will keep presenting them.Skins in hand I asked them to follow the instuctions on the booklet until they met the stats. When they did I explained to them how the stats worked, how they are tied to the Basic Moves and introduced the concept of "To do it, do it. If you do it, do it".After that I explained Skin Moves and waited. In five seconds someone asked about Strings, Conditions and Darkest Self.
I smiled and provided information.
I did this to avoid infodump, allowing them to tell me when they were ready.
After that I guided them through the Backstory, and explained them how Experience works.
All of this took almost an hour.
The enviroment wasn't too friendly, we were easly distracted and the shopkeepr had, from time to time, to serve kids searching for some sort of Warhammer paraphernalia or from the Magic tournament in the other room.
Surplisingly it hasn't been a big deal: we took it realxed, and this somehow managed to keep the interest high: it wasn't an obligation, it was something interesting we did to spend an entertaining afternoon.We were in a table fully visible from every part of the shop, thanks to a concious choice of the shopkeeper (Simon, you old fox...), and we attracted quite a lot of interest, because we were people clearly having fun and relaxing (and I believe because what we did was not immediatly recognisable as RPG without a masterscreen or a pile of manuals. Not kidding here).
I used the frequent interruptions to talk with Magic players and casual customers that expressed curiosity. I elevator-pitched (a long, slow ride in a very confortable elevator: I'm very verbose, sometimes. Often. Usually.) the game at least ten times during the afternoon.When we played the game went just smooth. I used Lake Havasu City as a setting, because I was familiar with it and because such a total hellhole should not be wasted, for goodness' sake!
I decided to start with the more obvious flag and with an evident conflict: The Mortal was a goth kid, new in town, so I just had a band of bad kids ambushing her outside the school. Casually the Werewolf, her Loved, who stated before to "hate bullies", was there. When you say the coincidences in this crazy, crazy world...
There was a little back-and-forth, but in general the players got quickly to the core of the game.In ten minutes we had the Mortal girly-slapping the bully, so I asked: "Are you lashing out? I don't think you are going to do much damage, he's burly and you are a tiny girl..." to what the player answered: "No, I'm trying to turn him on".
Way to go!
The game proceeded like this, with a stern and arrogant professor, the Vampire clinging on the verge of his Darkest Self, because he was playing an age-old master-vampire and all those little kids pushing at him were difficult to digest, and the player managed to play this giving me some real feeling, fully using the system, expecially Conditions, to support his game.In framing the scene I used a technique I often employ: I start from a cliché, that give it three- dimensionality adding, later, details.
For example we met the NPC Johnny Delgado, a young gangster, violent and dangerous... who has a Klimt poster in his bedroom.
"Why?" asked a player.
"I don't know", I answered.
And then another player: "Maybe it isn't his. Has is father a wedding ring?"
"Why, obviously he has!", I smiled and in that moment Johnny was complete to me: In that moment I decidet that he had a distant mother, an intellectual who left the family because living in the slums was just too much for her and he was missing her dearly.
I wrote a note of this on the post-it I was using to keep record of the NPCs, then stopped and explained to the public what I just did, letting _the player_ to give me ideas and building on them.
Excited comment from the "traditional RPG crew": this is cool! We can do this!
I did this often: sometimes I just stopped for a moment, explaining what I had just did, what move I used and how, why I was constatly throw sexual occasions to the Werewolf (to test him and to provoke the mortal) and why Delgado was starting to obsess on the Mortal (because the Vampire took him for his thrall).Sometimes I liked to "open the game" for them, showing them how it worked, how I could run it without prepping or why I told them to not worry on failed rolls.I have the impression many understood, having just observed in the game the effect of the various techniques.At the end what started as a "Let's wear the convention smile and end this quick, so I can spend the rest of the afternoon with my friends" became a very rewarding experience, and I found myself chatting about the game, keeping tabs for some new demo and adressing a lot of people to G+ and the indie gaming community here. I also met a kid who was already very attracted from indie RPGs but was not yet in contact with us and gave him hints (I sure hope to see him here on Google+).
The only black spot was: no women in the crowd, and that was really a shame.
Has anyone some specific questions?
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