First Draft: Euthymia

[Graham Walmsley]

I've finished a first draft. If anyone has a moment to give feedback, I'd really appreciate it, and of course I'll be happy to give feedback on other people's PDFs when they're uploaded.



This is a well-reputed free file hosting thing, but it's the first time I've tried it, so tell me if there's any problems.

[Edits: Damn! Uploaded the wrong file before. This is the correct one.]

Graham

[Graham Walmsley]

By the way, I have a job tomorrow which involves a lot of sitting around, and I could do with things to read.

If anyone has a draft of a game which they'd like feedback on, email it to me and I'll be happy to have a look through. My email address is Warlikeharry at AOL dot com. Yes, I know, it's a stupid email address.

Garham

[Joshua BishopRoby]

Not that you're working at this hour, with the time difference and all, but my draft (in my sig) can use a once-over. I'll be reading yours at lunch (right now).

[Graham Walmsley]

[Mark Bravura]

Just finished Our Steel, and it reads like a kick asphalt swashbuckler! Your writing style is crisp. You give lots of examples. The mechanics are easy enough to teach an intellegent child, but detailed enough to capture sword-play in all its gory glory. Kudos!

M.B.

[Mark Bravura]

"Everything stems from emotion: until you feel differently, you will never act differently."

I just finished Euthymia, and it had the strange endophin rush of being borderline hallucinatory, albeit lucid. A couple of quick notes:

You may want to include provisions for:

--> Two players with the same amount of drink;

--> Each player starting with an identical cup;

Also, I was vague on who takes drinks and when [except for the end session], and what effect on the game/players/ideal citizen status taking a drink has. Other than that, I'd playtest!

M.B.

[Queex]

I liked Euthymia- there were a couple of points I either missed or need clarification on.

- I take it that the feel aspect is used for conflicts, but doesn't that mean that it's always the feel aspects that hits 10 first, and thus kills the character? Or is it that any aspect other than feel hitting 10 will kill them?

- Presumably if feel would reduce to 0, it can't because the others can't reach -1. It's implied, but it would be nice if it was explicit.

I do like the way that feel conflicts are the high risk option- I can see interesting tactical play there. Although it might be an idea to make the initial differential between feel and the others more than one, otherwise all players' first conflicts will be geared towards feeling (assuming they don't get challenged first). Unless that's what you want.

[Graham Walmsley]

[Joshua BishopRoby]

Hey, Graham. Got a couple notes, comments, gripes, and ideas for you.

1) You need a reason for people to drink. Right now, the only reason anybody drinks is because they're thirsty. There's no reason to ever drink, because whoever has the tallest glass gets to play cards. Some ideas:
a) Tallest level opposes the narrator, lowest level supports the narrator (adds their card's value to the Aspect)
b) The Lowest glass does the opposition.
c) You have to drink in order to attempt to End the Turn.
d) You have to drink each time you play a card (this one is auto-correcting)
e) Each player picks a suit that's important to their character; whenever the conflict starts in that suit, they drink.

2) What happens when a player runs out of cards?

3) What happens when a player runs out of drink?

4) What happens if the bottle runs out of drink before the hour mark?

5) Does medication enter into the game at all? You mention it at the top of the table of contents, but it doesn't arise in the mechanics (is it what the players are drinking?).

6) On page 4, Building Euthymia, how about the players define why the state of Euthymia came to be -- what depraved excesses of emotion was the present regime established in order to correct?

7) I assume 'Acts on the Aspect, but Feels Guilty About It' is somewhere between three and seven; it might be worthwhile to define that in the text to guide play.

8) I LOVE the semi-secret Committee Member. SWEET.

9) If the setup doesn't take a full hour, what do you think of running one short initial scene at the end of the First Hour?

10) On page 9, you first say six cards, then five cards.

11) In determining who goes first, in the case of a tie, can you decline to put forward a second card (preserving your hand) and just let the other guy go first?

12) Why would you want to play an Ideal Citizen? If this is a state to be avoided (in terms of the game), why isn't a character at Aspects-0 taken out of play just like a dead character? This sounds kind of hostile, but I'm curious to hear your answer; there very well may be a reason I'm not seeing.

13) In the Ninth Hour, you talk about "the ultimate goal, whatever that is" but you haven't really talked about that beforehand. Could players build up their ultimate goal out of the scenes they play -- something like, at the end of every scene they stipulate one thing that their ultimate goal will be about, and in the ninth hour, they get to strike off half of them and create their "real" goal out of what's left?

14) In the Tenth Hour, the Committee Member can offer one player a reward to tempt them to turn on the others. Is there anything, mechanically, that reinforces this reward, or is it straight roleplaying? Again, I'm curious to hear the answer.

I really like the concept, and the central mechanic is neat (I like anything with organic development of characters). Looking forward to seeing this game develop and seeing its final form!

[Graham Walmsley]