Four sessions in, we finally played our first game of Scum & Villainy.
We’d played before, of course, but not really. The first session was the getting-to-know-you version, with players A, B, and C. It was character creation, lots of rules explanations and examples, and trying to move away from the classic D&D, “I roll Stealth.” I used the starting scenario from the v1.7 handouts and plopped the players onto rails. I stuck a progress clock in there, but it was clunky. I managed to avoid any vivid descriptions and the players avoided roleplaying. I forgot about position and effect a few times (until after the dice were rolled).
The second session had players A, B, and D, and got better. I started off with a little exposition to customize my galaxy a bit, and put the gun on the mantlepiece. I used small gang rules and we hashed out the differences between Consort, Sway, and Command. I still had the rails down, but the NPCs were better (and present) and I found time to describe a few things. Player A roleplayed, and B used their playbook ability and Attune a couple of times. Played D, new to the system, took the first Trauma when Chekov’s gun finally went off in the last scene. I remembered to introduce factions and to use the characters’ friends.
Third session was Players A through E, and was rocky (from my point of view). I had issues keeping everyone involved and in the spotlight, and the challenges I presented kept getting knocked down by great rolls. On the plus side, I had a couple more, and better, NPCs, I tied the job to a couple of players’ backgrounds, and we did Downtime at the beginning of the session to keep things exciting until the end. In addition, I finally got the train off of the rails (for the most part) and kept factions involved.
Last night, though, finally felt like we weren’t playing a learning game. I had a player roll for Entanglements the night before so that I could think about how it might lead to a job; it worked really well, involving both a +2 faction and a friend of the ship. We had Players A, C, D, and E there, but the episodic nature of the game made it easy to leave the missing character out.
I made a (in my opinion) creative handout for a little more exposition, which was received well. I reminded the players about XP triggers at the beginning of the session, and the roleplaying was more frequent and better than before. Position and Effect were easier to come up with and skills were getting intuitive. We used Flashbacks, Gambits, varied Load, individual player equipment, Assists, Set-up Actions, and Devil’s Bargains. I split the action up so the players had to divide their attention, and it was easier to move the spotlight around.
Finally, the players took a lot more responsibility for the story, coming up with unexpected plans and involving their Trauma and fictional positioning even when it made things worse for them (three of four players overindulged their Vices, one for the expressed purpose of hitting Wanted Level 1, which everyone loved). Everything just flowed better and felt more fun, and there was so much roleplaying that we had to pack it in before the job was done.
The players are looking forward to finishing the job next time, and to see what’s next. For my part, I can’t wait to get the final draft of the S&V PDF.
Oops, this is probably in the wrong category/sub-forum/etc, as it’s less actual play and more general experiences. Sorry!
Posting it in this subsection is ok (I can move it if you really want me to) ^_^ Also it’s warming my heart. It’s always delightful to read something like this.
I’m heads down busy this weekend with something else, but our sheets are off to our editor, and those should release with the final PDF when the preorders for the physical book go out mid-june. So the updated PDF is just a few weeks away. Glad you’re looking forward to it!
That’s great to hear. I’m looking forward to: page references to pages other than X; up-to-date handouts; cool art.
I’m also curious if there will be a dedicated S&V community somewhere. There’s a lot of wonderful resources for BitD here, and it’d be great to have that sort of thing available for S&V.
It’s an interesting question. John LL and I have talked about it, and we’re not sure if there’s enough interest to sustain something like that.
When you said “challenges I presented kept getting knocked down by great rolls”, and sounded disappointed, that triggered little alarm bells in my head.
Great rolls? Cool! Go crew! Be a fan of your players and rejoice with them when things go smoothly. If everything always went smoothly, it’d get boring, but they’ll get a 3 on 4d soon enough, and things will get pretty interesting. Cheer for them when they rock, and know that they’ll inevitably create their own problems to get out of.
As for the rails: a while back I was surprised to realise that the most improv’ed, least prepared game I ever ran was the one where the players thought there was some sort of dastardly conspiracy where everything was connected. Practicing your improv skills and connecting things after they come up, rather than planning every detail out beforehand, can work really well. What you know and what the players experience can be very different things.
Matt Balara
Good points, and I appreciate the input. I should have expanded more on that, but I was focused on getting to the last session.
For the session you referenced, the players had rolled a 6 for their Engagement roll and things just went pretty well from then on. I got nervous about how the players were feeling because I wanted to get some Desperate rolls in (I had a little D&D mindset left over where I was concerned about them getting XP) and I also feared they might be getting a little bored since everything was going so well. So, it wasn’t adversarial; I just wanted folks to have a good time.
After the session they told me that they actually did feel it was exciting. You’re right about the players’ experience being different. For them, it was ‘oh no, more trouble’ -> ‘roll 6’ -> ‘relief, we’re awesome!’ For me it was ‘present obstacle’ -> ‘they roll 6’ -> ‘okay, they did it, think of the next thing.’
Scott Wheelock yeah, that’s the main thing: as long as everyone’s actually having fun, it’s all good.
I’m still working on my improv game, but in that situation I’d happily let the crew sail through a quick & easy score as if it was nothing. They feel competent and powerful, which is great, then take heat, overindulge vices, etc. and everything gets messier. The system’s built well for that – no crew can be clean and untouchable, no matter what they roll. And no matter what, the 6s won’t hold forever anyway. 😉