{Due to an audio glitch, the NWOD game scheduled for today is unavailable. Instead, please enjoy this awesome playtest of the RPG Angela is working on. This is an old playtest so what you hear is a bit out of date, but it’s still fun to listen too.}
Join three toys as they go through a typical day in their quest to become real.
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Listening to this after your latest Shadowrun episode, really drives home the fact that Angela giving one word “Yes/No” answers to your questions has been ruined forever.
Took me a little bit to figure out what was going on, It was certainly a lot of fun, but without a complete understanding of the rules it’s hard to tease apart what I like about the setting to what I like from listening to the Fandible playing sentient toys.
So as I understood it, it can be summarized as Toy Story done in the FATE system? I think that’s a really neat idea, because it enforces the stealth idea in gameplay and renaming FATE points to Imagination Points is perfect, and drives home the idea that players really are only limited by what they think their action figure can do.
There seemed to be a bit of a shift in the tone of the story about halfway through the game. The first half seemed to be the three “players” taking on the role of Storyteller for the GM, which I thought was a very nice inversion of the usual setup. The toys are playing with the child, so they come up with some interactions, and then the child plays with them and rewards them with imagination point. Then the story seems to shift where reality is trying to intrude on the wonderful fantasy setting, and the toys take action to keep the childhood wonder alive. I don’t know if that was a deliberate story structure, but it is a really clever storytelling device. Players start out with few imagination points and all of their aspects, and then through play they can build up imagination through roleplaying, but might suffer Aspect damage. The second half then has them playing their newly imagined toys against forces that would deny their own existence.
There’s still a lot of context missing for me for the game, but I thought it was very well done. Good work Angela, hope we can hear a session with the updated rules soon!
Thanks so much for the in-depth comment Jake! I think you’ve sussed out things even I hadn’t thought about yet.
The system definitely has some similarities with Fate, though I think the new version has some definite departures from Fate which will help it stand alone as its own system (especially when it comes to character advancement – I CAN’T WAIT to try out those rules). Hopefully we’ll get in a game with the new rules soon and get it posted in the first few months of 2014.
You’re welcome for the feedback, and all I ask in return is we all pretend I said “Unhallowed Metropolis” instead of “Shadowrun” up there.