A messy game about desperate people and violent situations.”

That’s the tagline of Joe McDonald’s spanking new three player storytelling engine. New? Three players? Messy? It sounded perfect.

Nose (Cover, Interior & Writing)

First of all, let’s talk about the book itself. I say book, but it’s pretty much a leaflet: 12 staple-bound pages of informal rules with a simple layout. It’s a chatty read, with some evocative text, written in a trashy, sexy style very much akin to the sub-genre it is attempting to emulate. There’s a couple of typos and inconsistencies in the way that terminology is formatted, but overall it’s a nice piece of one-man design.

A closed nosed, simple and cheeky mix of  mandarin and leather.”

Attack (Innovation, Inspiration & Excitement)

The loss based decision point (asking the protagonist player to sacrifice after every conflict) looks like a clever and insightful twist. It seems to set up tragedy and antagonism. Before I played the game, this was the most exciting draw. If the sacrificed components of the decision points were handled by adversarial players, the game might serve up a meaty risk factor for the sacrificing player. As I’ll discuss later, it didn’t work out quite like that during play.

Overall, I would have preferred a little more colour text. The game advocates a sexiness that I don’t see mechanised, which leaves me wanting for sexy details. What should I be saying at the tabletop? Ideally? What sort of descriptions should a player be giving? If you’re not comfortable with pussy-fucking-filth-talk, then where does that leave you? I’d like a few examples, suggestions and alternatives.

Before I played Gun Thief, I was excited about challenging myself (by putting myself in a position to objectify women—something I’m not comfortable doing), I was excited about telling violent, sexy stories, and I was enthused by the loss based decision point. But I was scared by the lack of structure. This is my crutch as a player: I want to be sure I’m playing the game properly. After reading Gun Thief, I was stuck. How would I know if I was playing the game properly if I didn’t have a strong idea about what that play was supposed to look like?

A brash, nervy pendulum of young, unripe flavours like orange rind and green bananna.”

Body (Assistance, Choice & Experience)

After playing Gun Thief with two indie gamers, I was initially pleased by the freedom of the game engine. It asked a couple of questions and then left the rest up to us. At first, it felt as though our creativity could not be curbed. Which, while awesome, unfortunately trended me toward coagulation. I didn’t feel like the game or game text offered support or inspiration for new ideas.

Instead, in a way, the game seemed to limit creativity during play, specifically by constraining the role of challenger and protagonist to fixed players.

I see no good reason for the game to constrain the protagonist to one player. Why not shift the roles after every scene? In our game, the Law was consistently asked to make new challenges, the Jagged Women was consistently asked to be sexy, and the Gun Thief was consistently able to do whatever he wanted. He had the easiest time, because all he had to do was respond to the environment and yet, after the game, he told me that he felt like he had no meaningful choice during the game. The consistence in player roles, rather than build momentum and expertise, put us on the spot, asking us again and again to provide new iterations from a gradually expiring resource of new ideas. After each scene was resolved, it felt like the Gun Thief character had wrapped up all the loose ends—that is, the Law and the Jagged Women players felt blocked and blocked and blocked by his authority over the emerging narrative. All our challenges were being chewed up and digested. Where was the bounce of creativity?

It seems to me, and maybe this is because I wasn’t able to interpret the text properly, that the scene resolution system doesn’t work. The Law sets up a scene, The Jagged Women adds a twist and then the Gun Thief gets to roleplay for a bit. “At some point,” this is the advice used in the book, “the Gun Thief is going to make a hard decision.” That, to me, is frustratingly vague advice for a pretty crucial game mechanic. Anyway. So, now we get to the crunch. The Gun Thief player has to choose three things he wants to keep. Two of those options relate to items on his character sheet, items that have absolutely zero mechanical influence on the game. So, if I have three options, I’m nearly always going to go for “get the girl,” “get out unharmed” and “get what you came for.” But even if I don’t, and this is where the system falls down, I’m always, no matter what, gaining more than I’m losing (3 of 5 options). Additionally, I get to prioritise. So, by the time I’ve prioritised, and announced my options, I’ve already rationalised what’s important. I’m essentially never losing anything I care about, because I always get the best three things I want. In our game, therefore, the protagonist player felt like there was absolutely no tension in the decisions he had to make. “I never felt like there was a hard decision,” were his exact words.

If I play again, I’ll probably reduce the clauses to “get the girl,” “get out unharmed,” “get the thing,” and ask the Gun Thief to choose only one option. Or, I might keep the options, and the number of choices, but mix up the order of who chooses what and when. For example, let the Gun Thief choose one thing he keeps (narrate), the Law choose one thing he sacrifices (narrate), the Jagged Women choose one thing he keeps (narrate), etc. Because at the moment, the big choice mechanic in the game seems to have no weight or risk, and therefore no meaning.

Despite all this hard talk, I did have a good time. The game wasn’t really about desperate people, it wasn’t messy and it wasn’t very violent, so I guess Joe McDonald’s tagline didn’t shine through at my table. But we had fun. I enjoyed the challenge of objectifying the women in the game (though it felt chauvinistic), and the challenge of talking dirty in front of my mates, so I think I learned something about myself. However, if that was the game’s intent, it didn’t sell it very well on the back cover.

Thin bodied and slippery.”

Finish (Clarity, Utility & Support)

The rules are clear in most places, though I’m desperate for support. This is the type of game that suggests a fundamental awareness of the indie story game paradigm. Personally, I prefer reading games that support the paradigms they are a part of. You know, sort of reinventing the wheel, as it were. A game without that support, for me, seems incomplete. On the positive side, it makes it punchy, short and liberated—ideal for seasoned gamers. These are selling points.

Nevertheless, all of my favourite gaming experiences lately come from games that do exactly the same thing in their texts. In a sense, completeness may not measure quality. Or, in fact, maybe there is merit in incompleteness—something in the gap that I can fill with my own kind of fun. The question I’d like to ask Joe McDonald is whether he knows about that gap and whether it was intended.

Short, vague and cloudy. A sense that with ageing and a more open palette, there may be hidden complexities to unlock.”

Conclusion

Taking into account all the difficulties I had with the text, the challenge I faced in trying to make things sexy, and all the high spirited enthusiasm for what, I perceive, to be an incomplete game, I’d call Joe McDonald’s Gun Thief a 2009 California Old Vine Zinfandel.

Goes well with pizza, ribs and barbecues.

(Tomorrow I’ll be posting a more detailed analysis of the three anxieties I have about Gun Thief.)

Back last October, Nathan Paoletta started the 2G1N competition. Joe Prince’s Hell 4 Leather was the overall winner and my Hell for Leather won Best Dark Game. Now, for the first time, we’re bundling these two bad-ass games together with a huge discount. Included in this bundle:

• Joe Prince’s Hell 4 Leather (Winner of the 2G1N competition 2009)
• Sebastian Hickey’s Hell For Leather (Winner of the Best Dark Game, 2G1N 2009)
• Hell for Leather Deluxe Target
• Hell for Leather PDF

That has a street value of €28. We’re giving it away for €19. There’s limited stock, so grab your copy today!

Order Joe Prince’s Hell 4 Leather and save €9!! Includes both the RPG Books, the HfL PDF & the HfL Target!

Finally, after yonks of work and waiting, Hell for Leather is ready to order. So, get your sexy, blood soaked ass to the shop and grab a copy.

If you’re quick, I’ll sign it.

Imagine this fella printed on 12pt, gloss laminated card stock. Oooh, I’m getting shivers of pleasure.

It contains:

• Hell for Leather RPG Free Edition — 83 pages of stoopid, sexy violence
• 3 playsheets — 2 Targets and the Team Sheet
• 2 Play Guides — Cheat Sheet and the Setup Sheet

This is everything you need to run a game of Hell for Leather RPG tonight!

If you like what you see, please consider supporting the author by posting an actual play report on your favourite gaming forum. We need all the press we can get! Help us if you can!

If you have any feedback, you can leave your comments here or email the author using the contact page.

Malcolm Craig, Gregor Hutton, Joe Prince and Russell Williams were the geezers involved. Here’s a playtest report.

I’m not sure how to repay this generosity except by promoting my favourite games from their collection (in no particular order):

Thanks guys.

Ribbit.

The last two weeks have been crazy with Hell for Leather rearrangements. I’ve ditched new rules, brought back old ones and stitched in a new scene structure. You’ll be able to see the difference from the new two page Cheat Sheet. Too-wit too-woo!

I just need to run it through a couple more playtests and then whammo, it’ll be done. Right?

We built the Frame (world and setting) quickly, but this time we ran with the first idea that came along (70s narcotics unit gone bad) rather than using the Quick Framing rules. Once you use those rules a couple of times, you get educated—if you haven’t read them, here’s how they work: no one says “no” and you bid to make suggestions. Soon enough, if you realise what’s going on, you can do without them. I like that. It’s like there’s a little teacher in my book, doing a tutorial on how to run better games. I don’t remember putting him there, but he’s there nonetheless. Thanks game.

Backdrop Problems

I was anxious about the chaos of play. It’s all fine when everyone plays the same, but sometimes (ahem) you get a group of people who want different things at different times. For example, three people want an action scene and two want to explore character. If there are tools there for individuals to take over the flow of the game, and there are differences in expectation, then the game will slosh all over itself as individual players tug it from one direction to another.

For example, I chose a bar for the Backdrop (scene) and I positioned the other characters in that bar so that one of the characters was being accosted by the local drunks. Immediately, Eoin changed the Backdrop. Now it was an hour later and the characters had the key to a truck. Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Where was my scene? It had vanished in a puff of smoke, because one player wanted something different and they had the authority to change it. Even though my scene was predictable and crass, it was still my scene. My ideas should count, even if they’re a bit rubbish.

This pattern has been repeating over the last few playtests: someone says one thing and then gets overruled. The mechanics support it, reward it even. Of course, finding this out was a real nugget of gold. I’ve been able to come up with a much better solution since.

But before I go into that, I’ll just talk briefly about the new characterisation scenes, which I had provisionally called “time-outs.”

Time-Outs

In this playtest, each character had to pick an “agenda.” This was a simple motivation targeted against another character. During character creation, all the players were being asked what they wanted from another character, and why. Playing a 70s narc unit gone bad, we had a couple of angles: There was Guy the Addict who wanted to find out about the hidden stash from Ray; Ray the Thuggish Follower who wanted gain respect from James; and James the Lieutenant who wanted to turn Guy into a scapegoat.

There was a much greater sense of depth from this playtest. We had interesting conflict. This was enhanced by the time-out rules, where a player could call for a special kind of scene to see whether or not a character could reconcile his agenda. The mechanical effect was that a player could reduce the height of the Heat (the stack of wobbly dice) depending on how the agenda was resolved.

Although time-outs hadn’t fixed the bigger issue, they opened the door for my next decision, which I’ll go through briefly.

Run or Rest?

I had this outstanding problem: players could negatively derail an idea too easily. The solution was to put one person temporarily in charge of a scene’s purpose, while at the same time rewarding suggestions and other kinds of contribution[1].

Yawn (rules stuff): One player chooses a scene type: Run (plot) or Rest (character). If there’s a Run Scene, the player must state the Scene’s Objective. Players now play out that Scene according to the Objective.

What the hell does that mean? It means, “this is a Run Scene, it’s set in a bar, and it ain’t over until someone gets the keys to the army truck.” It means, “do my idea!” It means, “you’ll get your turn, but until then, make my turn awesome!”

Yawn (rules stuff): If there’s a Rest Scene (these replace the time-out rules), one player’s character tries to convince another player’s character to betray his own Flaw. If he succeeds, the Flaw is changed, the character gets a Trauma and the Heat goes down. If he fails, the Heat goes up.

And what the hell is all that Trauma nonsense and Flaws and stuff? It means, “we’re in a truck and I’m trying to convince your Cowardly character to get on top and fire at the helicopters.” It means that if you go with it, you’re not Cowardly any more, but instead you’re Bloodthirsty or Arrogant. It also means that you’ll be rolling dice with your off-hand and will probably get killed. Soon.

Doubts

I’m sure that these rules temper the chaos. I’m also sure that they expose characterisation. I’m not sure, however, if there will be too much front-loading and pre-play.

Anyway, here’s the Frame:

Prologue: Gameshow, 70s, Hyperviolent
Adversary: The Network
Gore Threshold: 5
Connection: Narcotics unit gone bad

Drop-Off: Highway, busted prison van
Objective: Manhattan Network HQ
Checkpoint 1: Find Captain Kessler
Checkpoint 2: Escape Cartel Ambush
Checkpoint 3: Kidnap the D.A. and his family

Playtime: 2.5 Hours, Players: 3, Ruleset: 1.06

Gonzo

Imagine you mixed time travel with the three stooges. You might get Socrates, Lenin and Hannibal on a mission to save the future. My favourite parts included Socrates convincing the hospital orderlies that Lenin was suffering a “rupturing of the three major humours,” Hannibal riding his laser mounted war elephants in the far distant future, and Lenin using the Tarantula-esque Walker to destroy the city (“Lenin Smaaaaash!”) just after he’d thrown JFK from the cockpit (had we somehow made a political statement?).

After Lenin was evaporated form time and Socrates was tricked by Stephen Hawking, it was up to Hannibal to save the day. It involved a boot, an uppercut, time delay explosives and a wink across time into the Jurassic age. The last shot was Hannibal materialising under the belly of a Apatosaurus with artillery shells peppered through his chest like cocktail sticks. Badabooooom!

Cheeeeeese. Beautiful, tasty, fatty cheese. Yum.

Quick Framing

We used the new Quick Framing rules, where players build the Frame by bidding their ideas with tokens.

Joe had an idea for a Prologue: November 22nd 1963. The characters were sent back in time to kill the would-be destroyer of humanity, John F. Kennedy.

The game plan went something lie this: Chrono-vigilantes running from the time cops. After assassinating J.F.K. we would have to steal his brain to overcome the ruthless dystopian future.

Musings: The Quick Framing rules work well. There’s one guideline I love: there’s no such thing as “no.” You don’t like a suggestion? No problem, suggest something else. Can’t think of anything better? Then shut up. Creative blocking is nasty. It stifles play. I think the Quick Framing rules monitor that pretty nicely.

Dealer

In the revised rules, there is a Dealer who sets up a scene. He provides atmosphere (Backdrop), awards Story Pips if people are roleplaying well (Applause), and presents a Challenge (so players get to use the tower of dice mechanic).

Musings: Once again, Backdrops were confused with Challenges. That is, the Backdrop part (where the Dealer should present a scene without conflict) was being used to present conflict (the domain of a Challenge). Oops. Big time.

Intensity

The Dealer rules are there to ease the creative pressure. Spotlighting one player as “controller” gives everyone else some room to stretch. During this session, I was able to chill out and and enjoy a great scene without the obligation of contribution. Sometimes it’s nice to watch.

Stuff

Prologue: 60s, time travel, JFK’s assassination
Adversary: Time Cops
Gore Threshold: 4
Connection: Former time cops, now chrono-vigilantes!
Drop-Off: Grassy Knoll
Destination: Pleasant Island, Nuclear Testing Area
Checkpoints: Set off EMP bomb, Steal Kennedy’s brain, Stow away on the test subject battle cruiser
Finale Missions: Steal Mecha-Kennedy’s brain…again, Destroy the temporal Nexus, Escape to the land of dinosaurs

Playing time: 2 1/2 hours. End Game:Finale. Survivors: None. Ruleset: 1.05

• 90% Artwork received (we’ll be showcasing both Jason and George’s artwork on the site over the next month)
• We’ve secured printers for Europe and the US
• PDF pre-order scheduled for 23rd May
• Work started on HfL: Freestyle
• More than 50 fans on Facebook
• First blind playtest in Italy

The big news is the release of the first public teaser on Drive Thru RPG. If you know nothing of Hell for Leather, check out that download or pick up a few hints here.