I feel very uneasy today, like I've forgotten something important or I'm about to make a bad choice or something...
Anyhoodles, last night our roleplaying group played two playtests for Kapcon.
The first was The Mountain Witch, a demo run by Steve. Because it was a demo we had breaks to talk about the rules systems, but the game itself seems very fun.
The premise is that everyone is an Akira Kurosawa style Ronin samurai. Our birth year animals were hugely important (so much that we were calling each other 'Tiger' and 'Horse' rather than the given names) and related to trust issues.
The mechanic of giving each other counters to show how much we trust each other worked very well, and although I personally found it hard to make up an entire backstory and plan for my character based on my secret dark destiny, the others had no trouble at all, so that was cool.
The second was Amazing Monkey Adventures, a rawking game where everyone is a zoo monkey having wild adventures. The best bit is definitely the "Mad Monkey Challenges". Basically, if something unexpected happens the GM asks how you feel about it. Either you can choose to be friendly, or you can roll a die and possibly be mad, friendly or curious depending on how the die rolls. The thing about choosing to be friendly is that the other characters can issue a Mad Monkey Challenge because they don't think you should be friendly.
Mad Monkey Challenges happen thus: everyone who disagrees with the decision gives the monkey in question a 'peanut' (game currency) and then everyone stands up, turns around and shouts "Mad Monkey Challenge!" then everyone turns back to the table making a face that is either mad, friendly or curious. Whichever emotion is most represented is the winner.
Awesome.
Best moment I had in the game? Let me paint you a picture. Imagine a cotton top tamarin, all tiny and black with a puff of white hair. Imagine it driving an ice-cream truck. I was really tiny so I had to alternate between steering and jumping on the accelerator, so the truck was bunny hopping some, and I had the music blaring, the lights on and hanging off one of the window wipers is a gibbon in a hat. Brilliant.
Big thanks to Jared A. Sorensen for designing a game that tested even our boundaries of craziness. The game is available for download here. Svend is going to run it at Kapcon.
PoF: damn weather too cold
CO: maybe it's the bleak weather?