Review: We Have The Technology

[Broin]

Just emailed.

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1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 8
Feedback: Committe is very well used. The players must persuade a
committee (of cyber-dolphns, no less) of the value of an emotion. They
act as lobbyists, more or less. That's neat. Emotion is the core of
the game. Ancient is well followed, as all the scenes happen in
historical eras. But - and this is a niggly point - the eras aren't
necessarily *ancient*, just old.

The session is two hours long. This was fine, but I didn't feel it was
an especially effective or interesting use of the time constraint. But
I did like the (strict!) internal structure of each session.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 9
Feedback: The game is almost perfectly clear. The layout is sharp, the
language is excellent, the example of play is friendly (and for once,
sounds like an actual example of actual play). A summary leads to the
rules which leads to a FAQ and 'advanced rules'. But is the
committee's cynicism visible to the players? How about Malfunctions?

Parts of the game felt rushed. The author notes the game was written
in 30 hours.

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 9
Feedback: I could run this game now, easily. I only had one small
issue, which was that I'm not 100% sure how conflicts are narrated.
And I would want to see more examples of what the GM does, and how he
participates. I see he's in an 'adversarial' role, but examples would
be lovely.

Otherwise, it's a short, compact, complete little game.

4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 7
Feedback: I'm going to have to be a little cynical, and rate this only
a 7. I don't see anything especially ineffective in what's written,
but as written, the group has to agree to play without knowing what
the game is about. The GM then explains the premise, rules, and play
commences. So... how do you persuade a group to play a game if you're
not allowed to discuss it?

I can maybe see some players have a difficulty playing such simple
characters. That would be fine for me, but characters defined by only
one trait could be an issue.

It wasn't clear to me if the androids are played like humans, or
humans with one near-obsessive trait. And do they know their androids,
or is that irrelevant? And I see that the players know they have an
emotion to champion, but do the robots?

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 5
Final Feedback: The game is fine as written, but I didn't find the
premise exciting enough that I wanted to go and play it.

I wasn't drawn to the android characters, or their situation.
Cyber-dolphins didn't interest me as the deciding committee. And as
the players would never meet or interact with the dolphins, I couldn't
see why they were dolphins, any more than 'a faceless computer' or
'aliens'. If the players interacted with the dolphins, at least the GM
could put on a squeaky voice.

Crucially, the 'win situation' (the characters persuade the dolphins
to retain a certain emotion in Humanity 2.0) didn't excite me. It felt
fairly arbitrary - what difference would it make to me, as a player?
Or as a character? What happens to the androids at the end?

I also didn't like the 'malfunction' mechanic, which added what I felt
was unnecessary goofiness to a game that otherwises deals with a
serious theme. Wouldn't this deflate the climax? If one character was
acting as a traitor all the way through, I could maybe see the point.

This was a let-down for me, as the game's very well written. I'd like
to see what the author does next, with more time and more
consideration.

TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 38

[Matt Cowens]

[Broin]

[Matt Cowens]

Morgue ran BMCT for a group of very tired players in the ealry hours of the morning. It was a lot of fun.

He wrote it up on his LJ:



I wanted to drive home, but had to stay awake until 2am so that my blood-alcohol would drop to a legal level. Morgue kept me awake and engaged until that happened very effectively!

[Willow]

[Matt Cowens]