Actual Play – 15 Minutes (8/21/2009)

15 Minutes is a game that Travis and I are developing together. It’s a game about what people do to become famous. Mostly he thinks of the ideas and then I act as a sounding board and first run play-tester. It might be more accurate to call me an editor, but my damn name is going on the cover.

To keep up with our development as it happens, check out the wiki: http://fifteenminutes.pbworks.com/ 

Here are my notes from the session:

Tried the pitch out today and realized it needs to establish a few more things:

1. Roles for the players to take (the drummer, lead singer, etc vs. the republican, libertarian, vs. the cute boy, bad boy, etc). After roles are established (or if they are intuitive to the setting) players should pick concepts to fill those roles.

2. Associated with setting should also start the factions, whether they be Soccer Moms and Geeks or the Scarlet Crusade, we should have a pretty good foundation for who will be the cred and haters.

Tried out character creation today and found the following:

1. Of the reasons to get famous (and not to get famous) we narrowed it down to this list: Power, Money, Love of the art/cause, and Attention. We’ll keep mining this but I think these will end up with having a fixed list of inspirations.

2. The “When I was” should have a contextual situation applied. I think “When I was in Kindergarten” or “When I was in Law School” is more meaningful than “When I was 5 or 24”. Of course “When I was 21” does have some inherent cultural significance.

3. There is room for a LOT of cred/hater groups. We definitely want to represent them physically somehow (probably with index cards) as well as represent their cred/hater rating (probably with tokens, glass beads, etc). Inspirations for this: High School Drama and Illuminati. Need to figure out a way to handle the geometry so the players can be connected to the same groups.

4. Digging the idea of dynamic character sheet. Defined by the cards, tokens and other physical representations in front of you. Cool because it is a) visible and b) easy to change physically to represent changes in the fiction.

5. Five players with four questions, potentially generating 2 unique groups each mean for a possible 5 x 4 x 2 = 40 EFFING groups. That is TOO many. We’ll have to use some measures to cap this. Fewer questions? Encourage reincorporation of groups? Or just a hard cap?

6. My gut is that players should all go through the same steps of character creation at the same time. So, everyone answers the first question before going onto the next, etc.

Results:

Pitch: A Heavy Metal Rock Band.

Travis:

When I was young, my friends said that some day we would be famous because of: Our heavy metal badassery

When I was 4, I ate sand, even though I knew popular chicks would hate me, but it was worth it because crazy dudes loved me for doing that.

When I was in 3rd grade, I put a bottle rocket in the teachers locker, even though I knew teachers would hate me, but it was worth it because geeksloved me for doing that.

Sean:

When I was young, my friends said that some day we would be famous because: Chicks take clothes off for Heavy Metal